Thermal message printer
AssigneeAmtel Systems Corporation
InventorsRichard B. Drabing, William S. Duvall
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A thermal message printer for printing a wide block of text which is produced with low cost printheads. The printer includes a thermal printer having a first number of fixed printheads equal in number to the lines to be printed on thermographic paper. Each of the fixed printheads has a second number of dot elements which are energized in a column fashion according to a pattern of dots to be energized from a matrix of dots for each of the characters. Control means are included for sequentially energizing selected ones of the dot heads in order to form the series of characters such that a wide block of text is printed.
Claims8
A message printer for displaying a message on thermally sensitive recording paper comprising thermal printer means for printing a message having a plurality of lines, said message represented by a series of characters on specified ones of said lines where each of said characters is formed by a pattern of dots energized from a matrix of dots having N rows and M columns, said thermal printer means including a first number of fixed printheads arranged to form a column, said first number equal to the number of lines to be printed, each of said fixed printheads having at least 1 by N dot elements, means for stepping said recording paper in a sideways fashion past said fixed printheads, and control means for sequentially enabling selected ones of said fixed heads and said dot elements for each column of each of said characters, thereby displaying said message in a sideways fashion.
A message printer for displaying a message on thermally sensitive recording paper comprising thermal printer means for printing a message having a plurality of lines, said message represented by a series of characters on specified ones of said lines where each of said characters is formed by a pattern of dots energized from a matrix of dots having N rows and M columns, said thermal printer means including a first number of fixed printheads arranged to form a column, said first number equal to the number of lines to be printed, each of said fixed printheads having at least 1 by N dot elements connected in common, means for stepping said recording paper in a sideways fashion past said fixed printheads, microprocessor means for sequentially enabling selected ones of said fixed heads and said dot elements for each column of each of said characters, thereby displaying said message in a sideways fashion, said microprocessor means including memory means for storing a program of instructions for controlling the operation of said message printer.
A message printer for displaying a message on thermally sensitive recording paper comprising thermal printer means for printing a message having a plurality of lines, said message represented by a series of characters on specified ones of said lines where each of said characters is formed by a pattern of dots energized from a matrix of dots having N rows and M columns, said thermal printer means including a first number of fixed printheads arranged to form a column, said first number equal to the number of lines to be printed, each of said fixed printheads having at least 1 by N dot elements connected in common, means for stepping said recording paper in a sideways fashion past said fixed printheads, microprocessor means for sequentially enabling selected ones of said fixed heads and said dot elements for each column of each of said characters, thereby displaying said message in a sideways fashion, said microprocessor means including memory means for storing a program of instructions for controlling the operation of said message printer and means for capacitively coupling said control signals to said fixed printheads.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.