Editing And Printing; Editing; Thermal Head - Star Micronics TUP400 Series Technical Manual

Star micronics technical manual thermal printer tup400

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2-2. Editing and Printing

2-2-1.

The CPU reads data sequentially from RAM and edits it in accordance with program instructions stored in EPROM. The

edited data undergoes parallel-to-serial conversion in the gate array, and is then output to the thermal head's drive

controller.

2-2-2.

The thermal head contains 640 heat elements. Printing is carried out by switching these elements ON or OFF as required.

(Note that Line Mode supports 600-dot printing only. Heat elements numbered 1 to 20 and 621 to 640 are always off.

(Off data is always being transmitted.)) The thermal head has a built-in dedicated drive controller. The controller consists

of a shift register, a latch circuit, and a driver circuit, as illustrated below.

The drive controller receives serial data (SI) from the drive control board in sync with the CLOCK signal. The controller

latches the incoming data (LATCH), then outputs it to the heat elements in sync with the trailing edge of the STROBE

signals. A data value of LOW corresponds to a heat-element value of ON.

COM

STROBE5

STROBE4

STROBE3

STROBE2

STROBE1

LATCH

CLOCK

Fig. 2-5 Thermal-Head Drive Circuit

Latch

Shift Resistor

– 21 –

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