Tape printing device
AssigneesKing Jim Co., Ltd., Seiko Epson Corporation
InventorsKenji Watanabe, Takanobu Kameda, Chieko Aida, Tomoyuki Shimmura, Yoshiya Toyosawa, Hiroyasu Kurashina, Takeshi Hosokawa
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
When stoppage of printing on a tape is commanded, an automatic non-printing feed of the tape equal to the distance between the print head and a cutter is performed to enable cutting of the tape with minimum waste. Additionally the forming of leading and trailing margins on a printed tape less than the distance between the print head and cutter is enabled by providing deceleration and acceleration coupled with print pulse width variation corresponding to tape movement.
Claims4
A tape printing method, utilizing a print head for printing characters on a tape and a cutter, spaced from said print head, for cutting the tape, wherein a margin smaller than the distance between the print head and cutter can be formed, said method comprising:
- feeding a tape at a normal printing speed to, in succession, the print head and the cutter;
- decelerating the feeding to a stop and stopping the printing operation for a momentary time when the front end position of a printed text reaches a position a predetermined distance in advance of the cutter;
- cutting the stopped tape to remove an unnecessary portion of the tape extending beyond said predetermined distance;
- and starting and accelerating tape feeding to the normal printing speed at the end of said momentary time;
- and
- printing the tape during said decelerating and accelerating by means of varying pulse width signals applied to the print head, said varying pulse width signals having pulse widths corresponding to tape movement during said deceleration and acceleration.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.