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AssigneeHewlett-Packard Company
InventorsDavid J. Shelley, Rick A. Warp, Majid Azmoon
Estimating the term…
A printer-plotter system is provided having a single horizontally movable, print-plot head comprising geometrically arranged thermal resistor elements which are processor-controlled for plotting continuous multi-directional line segments and for printing, while plotting, upper and lower case alphanumeric characters and punctuation characters in four orthogonal directions. Characters are printed in 5-columns-by-7-rows dot matrix form, with neighboring dots partly overlapping each other in order to impart a continuous or drawn appearance rather than a discontinuous dot appearance to the printed characters. The geometric arrangement of the head elements also provides for varying the width of line segments plotted along selected orthogonal directions.
A system for forming visual output [manifestations] images on a web, comprising:
A method of forming output [manifestations] images having one or more rows and columns on a web using a movable head with a non linear plurality of print elements thereon to form portions of each output [manifestation] image in one of four orthogonal directions, the method comprising the steps of:
[11. A print head comprising a cluster of a selected number of print elements disposed on and about at least two diagonals for forming output manifestations on a web in any of four orthogonal directions, such elements being located at the intersection of first and second coordinate positions, with no element occupying the same first coordinate position and no element occupying the same second coordinate position.]
[12. The print head as in claim 11 wherein each first coordinate of the print element is a row coordinate and each second coordinate is a column coordinate.]
[13. The print head as in claim 11 wherein the print elements are aligned in overlapping contiguity along the coordinates for producing partly-overlapping contiguous output manifestations on the web.]
[14. The print head as in claim 11 wherein the print elements are disposed having independent conductor leads and a common ground lead.]
[15. The print head as in claim 11 wherein a first group of the selected number of print elements are used for printing output manifestations in the form of upper case characters, a second group of said elements are used for printing lower case characters, and a third group of said elements are used to print punctuation characters.]
[19. A print head comprising a plot element and a cluster of a selected number of print elements disposed on and about at least two diagonals for printing and plotting substantially simultaneously and forming output manifestations on a web in any of four orthogonal directions, such elements being located at the intersection of first and second coordinate of positions, with no element occupying the same first coordinate position and no element occupying the same second coordinate position.]
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.