Thermal print head control for printing serial bar codes

Abstract

A printer for printing serial bar codes on a web of record members with a thermal print head is shown. The thermal print head is driven by a series of pulses having a constant duty cycle for each row of information printed. However, the number of pulses in the series is varied from row to row, in accordance with the status of the current row being printed as a bar row or a space row; with the status of at least one row immediately preceding the current row and at least one row immediately succeeding the current row; and with the number of bar rows previously printed. By varying the number of pulses applied to the thermal print head and thus the amount of energy applied thereto, discontinuities in the serial bar code and any information, such as a human readable character, printed adjacent thereto are minimized.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.