Incremental printing of symbolic information – Thermal marking apparatus or processes – Housing or mounting
Reexamination Certificate
2002-11-15
2004-12-14
Tran, Huan (Department: 2861)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Thermal marking apparatus or processes
Housing or mounting
C346S024000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06831670
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a printer equipped with a function for cutting paper.
RELATED ART
Conventionally printers have been widely used in the home as output devices for fax machines and in establishments as output devices for Point of Sale (POS) units. Many of such printers print onto paper supplied from a roll. In recent years, however, compact printers such as ink jet printers have come into increasing use in homes and offices. These printers print onto standardized sizes, such as A4, of cut sheets or cut paper. In keeping with this trend, many recent fax or facsimile machines also use cut sheets, with such machines becoming increasingly common in the home.
However, compared to printers that use cut sheets, roll paper-type printers have an advantage in that it is easier to make the overall size of the printer compact. In the case of a cut-sheet printer, a printer that can print on cut sheets of a given size such as A4 (21 cm by 29 cm), the printer needs to be at least big enough to store A4 sheets (21 cm by 29 cm) in a laid-out manner. On the other hand, a roll paper-type printer needs to be as wide as the A4 size (21 cm for example), but only sufficiently deep to accommodate the diameter of the roll, which can be only a few centimeters across, for example.
In recent years, in particular there has been demand for printers that can be carried with a mobile computer (mobile terminal), such as a mobile phone or a PDA (Personal Data Assistant), and can be connected to such a mobile computer so that printing becomes easily performed in any location. Small, slimline printers that can print on A6 size (10.5 cm by 4.8 cm), for example, or smaller paper are desired. Since the overall sizes of roll-paper type printers are more compact than those of cut sheet-type printers, roll-paper type printers are well-suited to use as portable, compact, slimline printers.
Compared to a serial-type printer, in which printing is performed while a print head is traveled in the scanning direction, it is easier to produce a thermal-type printer, which has a line thermal head and a platen roller for feeding paper while pressing the paper onto the line thermal head, as a compact printer since there is no need for space in which to run the print head in the scanning direction or for a mechanism for moving the print head. If thermal paper is used, there is no need for consumables such as ink, toner or an ink ribbon, which makes maintenance easier and makes it unnecessary to provide space for storing the consumables. This means that thermal paper is especially suited to compact, portable printers. For these reasons, paper-roll-type line printers can be produced in slimline, compact designs, making them suitable as printers that are carried along with PDAs or mobile phones and are used together with such devices, or as printers for personal use that can be used in place of a conventional memo pad.
Printers also need to be user-friendly devices. When a paper-roll type printer is used, the printed paper that is discharged from the printer needs to be cut into sheets of a desired size, so that some paper-roll type printers can be cumbersome to use. While it is possible to provide a blade at the discharge slot to enable the user to manually cut the printed paper that is discharged, when a plurality of pages are printed out consecutively, the print operation has to stop every time a page has been printed out so that the page can be manually cut off the roll, making the printing operation cumbersome. On the other hand, a plurality of pages may be consecutively printed, though in such case the user then has to go to the trouble of cutting the paper roll into separate pages.
Some conventional A4 fax machines are equipped with a cutter for automatically cutting the printed paper roll into A4-sized sheets. There is no need for the user to cut each page by hand, and a page by page printout, not a continuous printed roll, is obtained when a multiple page document is received. However, there are a number of problems when incorporating this kind of cutter mechanism into an A6 or smaller portable, slimline printer as mentioned above. A first problem is how to incorporate a cutter in a compact manner without increasing the bulkiness of the printer. Unlike a fax machine or a conventional desktop printer where there are no particular problems if the thickness and width or length are several dozen centimeters, a postcard or business card size printer has to be compact and slimline (for example, a thickness of between a few centimeters and 1 cm, or less) with a width and length of a few centimeters, and it is preferable for the cutter mechanism to be added without changing the size of the printer.
It is also extremely difficult to completely prevent paper jams from occurring for a printer, so that a printer needs to have a construction that makes it possible to remove a paper jam. When a cutter mechanism is provided, the cutter makes it difficult to access the paper feeding path and to remove the paper jamming the printer from the paper path. In particular, in the type of compact, portable printer described above, the paper path (paper feeding route) is designed to be virtually the most compact route possible, so that it is very difficult to come up with a design that makes it easy for users to remove paper jams. When a cutter mechanism is additionally provided, it becomes even more difficult to remove a paper jam. In order to stop excessively large margins being left on the printed roll, the cutter should preferably be disposed so as to cut the paper as close as possible to the line thermal head. Also, to make the overall design of a printer compact, it is preferable to position the cutter mechanism as close as possible to the thermal head and the platen roller. This means that the cutter prevents access to the point at which the paper is held between the thermal head and the platen roller, so that it is difficult to provide a compact, portable printer that is easy to use anytime and anywhere.
It is a first object of the present invention to provide a compact printer which uses a paper roll and is internally provided with a cutter mechanism, and with which paper jams can be easily removed. It is a second object of the present invention to provide a compact printer that can be carried together with a mobile terminal, is easy to maintain, and can print reliably wherever the printer is used.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
A printer according to the present invention uses a cutter mechanism that includes a movable blade and a fixed blade. The printer also includes a line thermal head and a platen roller and one of the line thermal head and the platen roller can be moved to a position (the second position) where paper jams can be removed, and one of the fixed blade and the movable blade directly or indirectly attached to one of the line thermal head and the platen roller so that when the line thermal head or platen roller is moved to the second position, one of the movable blade and the fixed blade is also moved together with one of the line thermal head and the platen roller. This is to say, the printer of the present invention includes: a line thermal head; a platen roller for holding a paper between the platen roller and the line thermal head and feeding the paper; a cutter, including a movable blade and a fixed blade, for cutting printed paper; and a cutter driving mechanism for driving the movable blade, wherein at least one of the line thermal head and the platen roller can be moved from a first position for printing to a second position for removing a paper jam, and one of the movable blade and the fixed blade is directly or indirectly attached to one of the line thermal head and the platen roller so that when the one of the line thermal head and the platen roller moves from the first position to the second position, one of the movable blade and the fixed blade also moves together with the one of the line thermal head and the platen roller.
First, with the printer according to the present invention,
Blank Rome LLP
F&F Limited
Tran Huan
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