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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsSteven L. Applegate, John C. Bartlett, Brian W. Damon, David W. Holcomb, Cary P. Ravitz
Estimating the term…
Wear on the elements (5) of a printhead (3) is spread by shifting the region of use of the printhead line by line. Font (13) provides information as to whether any character in a line employs the upper three pels or the bottom three pels of a line. For each line which can be printed from different shift positions of the printhead, selection logic controls paper feed (15) to index platen (9) to the least used of a shifted position of printhead. Only those electrodes over the print line in each shifted position are used for printing. This distributes wear without requiring any special ribbon feed. The three pel height is at least as wide as the serifs on most characters, which avoids some electrodes being used for the serifs of given characters in more than one shift position.
A printing system comprising a printer having print elements in a column, means to examine data for lines to be printed by said printer prior to printing, means to determine from said examinded data continuous sections of said column of said print elements which can print all of the data in each of said lines and means responding to said means to determine to position said column of print elements in different positions along said column at which data can be printed by said sections, said different positions being selected based on the prior use of said print elements to distribute use of said print elements.
A printing system comprising a printer having at least fifteen individual print elements in a column mounted to be moved across a print-receiving paper mounted in said printer to print a line of characters on said paper, a buffer memory to receive said character information for printing by said printer and to store said character information prior to printing, line-end determination means responsive to characters received by said buffer memory and to predetermined non-character signals received with said character information to create a first control signal when said buffer memory has received characters to be printed as a full line, region-use determination means responsive to said first control signal and to characters in said full lines to create at least a second control signal when said characters in a full line do not include printing in a boundary region of said column, line-feed control means responsive to said second control signal to line feed said printer to a position at which a line to be printed has said print elements positioned to print on said line except on said boundary region, and means to print each full line employing those of said print elements positioned over said line and not employing those print element opposite said boundary region and not over said line.
A printing system comprising a printer having print elements for printing in a column, means to examine data defining consecutive characters to be printed by said printer, means to determine from said examined data common regions in said consecutive characters to be printed wherein printing from said print elements normally corresponding to said regions is not required, and means responsive to said determination to position said print elements in different locations including locations for printing said data with said print elements normally corresponding to said regions, said different locations being selected based on the prior use of said print elements to distribute use of said print elements.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.