Thermal printer, control method of a thermal printer, and printing system
AssigneeSeiko Epson Corporation
InventorsHideki Nishimura, Toshihiro Hagiwara, Yuki Nishimoto
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A thermal printer has a thermal head with multiple heat elements for printing on roll paper; a measurer that measures heat element resistance; printer memory storing a resistance evaluation table relating the resistance of the heat elements to heat element defect levels defined based on a specific range of reflectivity in the symbol image; and an evaluator that references the resistance evaluation table stored in printer memory, acquires a defect level based on the resistance measured by the measurer, and evaluates the defect state of the thermal head based on the defect level of a consecutively adjacent count of heat elements.
Claims9
A thermal printer comprising:
- a thermal head configured with multiple heat elements to print a symbol image on a print medium;
- a measurer configured to measure heat element resistance;
- memory configured to store relational information relating heat element resistance to defect level of a heat element defined based on a specific range of reflectivity in the symbol image printed on the print medium;
- and
- a processor configured to reference the relational information stored in the memory, acquire the defect level based on the resistance measured by the measurer, and evaluate a defect state of the thermal head based on the defect level of a specific adjacent number of heat elements,
- wherein the specific adjacent number of heat elements in the relational information is determined based on a density of the heat elements in the thermal head, and a density of the symbol image.
A control method of a thermal printer having a thermal head configured with multiple heat elements to print a symbol image on a print medium, and a measurer configured to measure heat element resistance, the control method comprising:
- storing relational information relating heat element resistance to defect level of a heat element defined based on a specific range of reflectivity in the symbol image printed on the print medium;
- and
- referencing the stored relational information, acquiring the defect level based on the resistance measured by the measurer, and evaluating a defect state of the thermal head based on the defect level of a specific adjacent number of heat elements,
- wherein the specific adjacent number of heat elements is determined based on a density of the heat elements in the thermal head, and a density of the symbol image.
A printing system comprising:
- a thermal printer;
- and
- an information processing device capable of communicating with the thermal printer;
- the thermal printer including a thermal head having multiple heat elements to print a symbol image on a print medium;
- a measurer configured to measure heat element resistance;
- a first communicator configured to communicate with the information processing device;
- and
- a first processor configured to cause the first communicator to send the resistance measured by the measurer to the information processing device;
- and
- the information processing device including a second communicator configured to communicate with the thermal printer;
- memory configured to store relational information relating heat element resistance to defect level of a heat element defined based on a specific range of reflectivity in the symbol image printed on the print medium;
- and
- a second processor configured to reference the relational information stored in the memory, acquire the defect level based on the resistance received by the second communicator, and evaluate a defect state of the thermal head based on the defect level of a specific adjacent number of heat elements.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.