Hand-held sweep electronic printer with compensation for non-linear movement

Abstract

A hand-held and self-contained electronic printing apparatus (10) for printing indicia on a medium (M) which includes a housing (12) that can be manually positioned adjacent a surface of the medium (M) and manually swept across a printing area on the medium (M) during a printing sequence. A print head is disposed in the housing (12) which contains a plurality of print elements such as ink jet nozzles for printing indicia in a selectable pattern of dots on the medium (M) within the printing area. The printing apparatus (10) also contains an electronic control circuit disposed in the housing (12) for controlling the print head to print indicia on the medium (M) during a printing sequence wherein the control circuit comprises compensation means for reducing image distortion based on detecting the position of the nozzles during the printing sequence. In one embodiment, the control circuit compensates for image distortion that is the result of sweeping the housing (12) across a non-linear path.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.