Patent · US Expired

Head image generator for a matrix printer

US4284001A · kind A · utility

2Cited by
3References
31Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateOct 19, 1979
Grant dateAug 18, 1981
Priority date
Expiry dateOct 19, 1999

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06K2215/008
  • WIPO fieldTextile and paper machines
  • WIPO sectorMechanical engineering

Abstract

A wire matrix printer has a plurality of heads, each consisting of nine wires arranged in a slanting format. The printer can be controlled to print Oriental type characters such as Japanese by loading a wire image map of the characters into a memory. The loading technique loads the memory in a slanted fashion corresponding to the slant of the print heads and reads from the memory in a bit column manner to correspond to the position of the various wires of the multihead print block. The loading and unloading of the wire image memory is controlled by a pair of microprocessors operating respectively on different halves of the memory, such that at any given time, half of the memory is being loaded while the other half is being read from. Thereafter, the memory is switched so that the loaded half is read and the previously read half is cleared and loaded with a new line of information.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.