A portable printing system is provided for printing an image, such as alphanumeric or symbol information on a moveable recording medium, such as a tape, a sheet or the like, by means of manual scanning of the recording medium relative to the printing system. The printing system comprises a hand-held printer unit including a print head having an array of printing elements in combination with an adjacently disposed drive roller both disposed in cooperative arrangement along one edge of the printer unit. The drive roller is coupled to an encoder inside the unit that generates timing pulses upon rotational movement of the drive roller which control the rate of printing at the printing head of the printer to synchronize printing with the rate of movement of the recording medium relative to the printer unit. The printer unit may be detachably mounted to a recording medium transport unit which includes a platen which is engaged by the drive roller and print head with a recording medium and ink ribbon disposed between the print head and the platen. Alternatively, the printer unit may be hand-held with the drive roller and print head in engagement with a flat recording medium, such as an ordinary paper sheet. In either case, the recording medium travels in a path substantially perpendicular to the array of printing elements on the print head. A combination of two tape recording mediums is also disclosed to provide means to protect the printed image from the possibility of smudges and smears or other image deterioration from occurring directly on the printed image.
A printing system, according to the present invention, is comprised of a carriage having a thermal print head and associated ink ribbon cartridge, a platen, a label tape cassette, and a suitable housing and control electronics. The thermal print head can be alternatively positioned over the platen for printing on ordinary paper, or positioned to be in contact with the label tape cassette for making adhesive labels. An optical sensor detects when the printing carriage swings beyond the normal plain paper printing range. The thermal print head has sufficient dot forming capability and the control electronics is designed to support the printing of many fonts, including Japanese Kanji (Chinese characters), Hiragana, Katakana, and Romaji (e.g., English alphabet).
A composite printing device comprises a portable printer and a tape printer case removably engageable with the portable printer from below. The portable printer includes a bottom printing head, a pair of drive wheels and a pair of idle wheels. The tape printer case accommodates a tape roll for supplying a tape, a platen for guiding the tape, and a feed roller for feeding the tape from the tape roll. When the tape printer case is engaged with the portable printer, the printing head faces the tape guided by the platen while the drive wheel is operatively connected to the feed roller for rotationally driving the feed roller.
There is described a printing apparatus, particularly a label printer, which includes a switching mechanism operable in response to movement of the lid to permit operation of the printing apparatus only when the lid is closed. This can be combined with detection of the presence or absence of a cassette in a cassette receiving bay of the apparatus so that operation of the printing apparatus is permitted only in the presence of a cassette and with the lid in the closed position.
A paper feeder is arranged so that a hand-carry type portable printer per se is mounted thereon, and a magnetic repulsion and/or a mechanical engagement are utilized to properly orientate and position the printer with respect to the base frame, when mounting the printer on the base frame.
A label printing apparatus receives a cassette holding printing tape on which an image is to be printed. The apparatus also has a printing mechanism which includes a thermal printhead having a group of printing elements to which pixel data defining the image to be printed is passed sequentially on a group-by-group basis. The groups are printed adjacent one another in the direction of movement of the printing tape. A drive system is provided for driving the printing tape through the printing mechanism end includes a dc motor which is provided with a shaft encoder for monitoring the speed of rotation of the motor. Sequential printing of the groups of pixel data is controlled in dependence on the monitors speed of rotation of the motor. There is also described a label printing apparatus which uses monitoring of the speed of rotation of the motor to detect an end of tape condition.
