JPH0793671B2 - Recording control device - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a recording control device, and more specifically, for performing recording by a recording unit having a plurality of recording elements arranged in a line in an inkjet printer, a thermal printer, or the like. The present invention relates to a recording control device that controls the drive of

[Prior Art] Conventionally, as this type of apparatus, a recording control apparatus used in a full multi-array thermal printer, an inkjet printer, or the like is known.

In this type of device, the width of the recording medium used is A4,
If you try to record at a recording density of pixels / mm, the number of elements will be 2048. If all of them are driven at the same time, an enormous amount of power will be needed instantaneously (if 200mA is consumed per element, the instantaneous current will be about 410A with the above number of elements. Therefore, the device is divided into several blocks and driven by time division. In the time-division driving, the driving current per driving circuit is large, but there is an advantage that the required instantaneous current can be reduced and the number of wirings of the circuit can be reduced.

FIG. 1 shows an exploded perspective view of a part of an inkjet head as an example of a multi-array recording element.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 is an upper plate having a partition wall 3 which functions as an ink jet nozzle after assembly and is made of glass, ceramics or the like. Each partition 3
In the rear part, a recess 7 that functions as an ink chamber during assembly
Is provided. An ink supply port 2 is bored in the upper portion of the recess 7, and ink is supplied from an external main ink tank via the ink supply port 2.

On the other hand, a driving element 6 such as a heating resistance element or a piezoelectric element is formed on the lower plate 4 corresponding to the position of each partition wall 3, and these electrodes are driven by an electrode 5 similarly formed on the lower plate 4.
Through. If the recording cycle of each heating element is T and the pulse width of the drive signal is t, T / t is the maximum number of time divisions. That is, if the recording frequency is 2.5 KHz, the above T becomes 400 μs, and if the above t is 10 μs and 2048 driving elements are divided into 40 blocks and time-division driven, the power supply capacity is theoretically about 1/40. become.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a circuit for driving the recording element as shown in FIG.

What is designated by 27 in FIG. 2 is the recording element shown in simplified form with the number reduced to 24. Each driving element is divided into four blocks A to D, and each block has six elements (for example, A block has A1 to A6). One end of the elements of each of these blocks is selected to be applied with the power supply voltage VH by driver elements A to D such as transistors collectively via a diode Di. The other ends of the elements of the same number in each block are connected in parallel, and the voltage at these connection points is controlled by the driver elements 21 to 26 similar to the above. Therefore, the print data is given to the driver elements 21 to 26, and the driver element A
By turning on any one of to D, recording can be performed for each block. The element for applying the recording data signal and the select signal may be the reverse of the above.

At the time of driving, drive pulses as shown in FIG. 3 are sequentially applied to the driver elements A to D. At this time, if a signal designating recording is applied to all the elements 21 to 26, linear recording as indicated by reference numeral 10 in FIG. 4 is performed on the recording paper P. At this time, the recording paper P is assumed to move continuously. Here, what is indicated by reference numeral 8 is an ideal linear recording to be performed by the applied recording data.
A number indicating the position of each recording element is attached above the recording 8.

On the contrary, if the same recording data is given to the driver elements A to D and the same scan signal as that shown in FIG. 3 is given to the driver elements 21 to 26, the elements with the same number in each block are given. Since they are driven in sequence, the recording is shown in FIG.
A saw-toothed record is obtained as shown in.

In the so-called dynamic drive method as described above, the decrease in the number of wirings cannot be expected so much, and thus recently, a circuit as shown in FIG. 5 is widely used. Here, the driver element 16 is connected to one end of each of the recording elements 27 similar to the above, and the other ends are all connected to the power supply voltage VH.

The driver element is operated by the logical product of the two signals at the inputs, one of these input lines being connected in parallel for each block and controlled by signals 51-54. The other input line has 4 shift registers SR for each block.
These shift registers are connected to the outputs of L1 to SRL4 and are stepped by the same clock CLK.

The circuit as described above can be integrally formed on the lower plate 5 of FIG. 1 by semiconductor technology, and has an advantage that the number of circuits to be connected can be reduced. An example of a driving method in such a circuit is shown in FIG.

Signal line divided into 4 times in one cycle of signal TP indicating recording position
A drive signal is applied to 51 to 54 to select each block. At this time, simultaneously with clock CLK, each shift register SRL1 to SRL
The recording data signals given to the four input signal lines A to D are shifted, the data is fixed by the latch signal LAH at the bottom of FIG. 6, and time division recording based on the data latched in the cycle of the next signal TP is performed. To do.

In this method, the input signal lines A to D of the shift resists SRL1 to SRL4 are connected to each other and the recording data is generally given as serial data. Further, if the scan signals of the signal lines 51 to 54 are also controlled by the four shift registers, the number of signal lines from the recording element can be four, except for the power source. According to this method, even if the number of pixels is increased (even 2048 pixels which are normally used), recording control can theoretically be performed only by these four signal lines. The recording is as shown by reference numeral 10 in FIG.

The drawback of the above method is that it provides a serial transfer of data, which increases the clock speed. For example, the recording cycle
The clock is 5.1 to send 2048 data in 400μs.
It will be over 2MHz.

In view of this point, a method as shown in FIG. 6 (B) is also known.

That is, the input signal lines A to A of each shift register in FIG.
D is connected, the signal 56 is input here, and it shifts with the clock CLK and it is set as a scan signal. Then, the print data is input to the control lines 51 to 54 for each block. According to this method, the scan clock has a recording cycle of 400 μs divided by the number of blocks, so that the scanning clock is at most about 100 KHz. This method has the advantage that the circuit becomes simpler because no latch is required.

However, the straight line recording by this method has a drawback that it becomes a sawtooth recording as shown by reference numeral 11 in FIG.
An enlarged version of this record is shown in FIG.

Here, dot recording by each recording element of block A and block B is shown, and the number of elements of each block is 9
It is shown as an individual. That is, in the above method, since the elements of the same number in each block are sequentially driven, the recording dots formed by the 9th element and the 1st element are separated by the distance d during which the recording sheet moves. When an image or the like is recorded, the recording quality of the image deteriorates due to this shift.

[Objective] The present invention has been made in view of the above points, and an object of the present invention is to provide a recording control device capable of suppressing a deviation in dot recording as much as possible.

[Examples] Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail based on examples shown in the drawings.

FIG. 8 shows a drive circuit of an embodiment of the recording control apparatus according to the present invention. Here, the same members as those in the conventional example shown in FIG. 5 are designated by the same reference numerals, and detailed description thereof will be omitted.

The difference from FIG. 5 is that the order of shifting the signals of the shift registers SR1 to SR4 is reversed between the adjacent registers.

With such a configuration, since the dot recording order is reversed between adjacent blocks, when straight line recording is performed, recording as indicated by reference numeral 12 in FIG. 4 can be obtained. When this is enlarged and shown, the dot recording is as shown in FIG. In the case of straight line recording, as shown in the figure, there is no step at the break of the block of the recording element, and the recording is continuous, so that the recording is of a substantially gentle waveform and can be made closer to a straight line than in the past.

Even in the case of image recording or the like, it is possible to cause the recording shifts of the respective blocks to appear alternately, so that it is possible to obtain good recording quality with no visual problem. At this time, the input terminals of the shift resists SR1 to SR4 are connected, and the recording data is input to this connection point Q, and the driving method shown in connection with FIGS. 5 and 6 (B) is used. For example, the recording operation can be performed with a relatively low speed clock, and the device can be configured with a smaller number of wires.

Even if the above configuration is as shown in FIG. 2,
The same effect can be obtained by simply changing the connection order.

[Effect] As is clear from the above description, according to the present invention, a recording unit formed by dividing a plurality of recording elements arranged in a line into a plurality of element groups, and each element group of the recording section. Each of the recording elements in the selected element group are sequentially selected, and the recording elements in the selected element groups are simultaneously driven, and a driving unit that drives the recording elements in the adjacent element groups in the reverse order. Since the configuration having the above is adopted, it is possible to provide an excellent recording control device which is simple and inexpensive, has little deterioration in recording quality, and can reduce manufacturing cost.

That is, according to the recording control apparatus of the present invention, the recording elements in the adjacent element groups are driven in the reverse order to reduce the power consumption due to the time-divisional driving, and the steps at the breaks of the element groups. It is possible to minimize the deterioration of the recording quality due to the continuous recording due to the disappearance of the recording, and to freely select an appropriate number of time divisions according to the power supply section of the device, the recording speed, or the manufacturing cost for wiring that can be expected. It has an excellent effect that it can be set.

[Brief description of drawings]

1 to 7 are for explaining the drawbacks of the conventional recording control apparatus. FIG. 1 is an exploded perspective view of a recording element, and FIG. 2 is a circuit showing a configuration of a drive control circuit of the element of FIG. 3 and FIG. 3 are timing charts for explaining the drive timing of the circuit of FIG. 2, FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing various recording states, and FIG. 5 is a circuit diagram showing different conventional control circuit examples. FIGS. 6 (A) and 6 (B) are timing charts for explaining different control timings of the circuit of FIG. 5, respectively, and FIG. 7 is an explanatory view showing a part of FIG. 4 in an enlarged manner, and FIG. The following is a description of an embodiment of the recording control device of the present invention. FIG. 8 is a circuit diagram of a recording element drive control circuit of the recording control device, and FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram showing a recording operation by the control circuit. is there. 16 …… Driver element, 27 …… Recording element 51 to 54 …… Signal line

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Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A recording section obtained by dividing a plurality of recording elements arranged in a line into a plurality of element groups and recording elements in each element group of the recording section are sequentially selected and selected. A recording control device for driving recording elements in each element group at the same time, and driving means for driving recording elements in adjacent element groups in reverse order. 2. The recording control apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the recording element has a heating resistance element. 3. The plurality of recording elements are commonly coupled to an ink supply unit that supplies ink, and eject the ink based on an electric signal applied to the heating resistance element. A recording control device as set forth in claim 2.