Thermal printer for printing labels

US5534890A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Esselte Meto International Produktions GmbH · DE

Inventors

• Heidrun Krug · Wiesenbach, DE
• Jurgen Kunert · Hirschhorn, DE
• Jurgen Schoon · Eberbach, DE
• Horst Walter · Hofheim, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Jun 17, 1993
• Grant date: Jul 9, 1996
• Expiry date: Jun 17, 2013

Classification

• Technology area (CPC B): Performing Operations; Transporting
• CPC primary: B41J2/35
• WIPO field: Textile and paper machines
• WIPO sector: Mechanical engineering

Abstract

A thermal printer is equipped with apparatus for allowing the thermal printer to be quickly and easily adapted to the type of paper currently being used without the need for testing and adjusting to obtain an essentially optimum print quality. The printer can also be equipped with a temperature sensor, attached to the thermal print head and connected to the computer control to essentially also produce printed images of uniformly high quality regardless of temperature fluctuations of the thermal print head. The necessary information for providing the adjustment values for producing the high quality print can be stored in a read/write memory connected to the processor. Thus, for each thermal print head temperature, there can be a reference energy value which determines the amount of thermal energy to be generated by the heating elements, whereby the processor, after measuring the thermal print head temperature, selects a reference energy value corresponding to the temperature, and transmits it to the control circuit of the thermal print head.