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1.FEATURES
This printer is a type of thermal transfer printer, and it prints
by subliminating ink through the print head heating an ink
ribbon to which solid ink has been applied and having it
adhere to special paper coated with a polyester resin.
Fine changes can be made in the printing density by control-
ling the heat applied, and it is possible to present continuous
tones like those in photographs.
In addition, since a system of attachment to a platen roller
and rotation is used instead of a system of moving the paper
back and forth, there is no time lost in reversal of the paper
feed, and complete printing to the edges is possible because
of the attachment of the paper to the platen roller.
Furthermore, PictBridge is used, so simple operations can be
implemented without a PC.
2.OUTLINE OF CIRCUIT DESCRIPTION
2-1.Power supply section
A mechanical switch is used for the power switch, and the con-
figuration is such that it a reset is carried out when the power is
turned ON/OFF.
The necessary voltages are created by a DC-DC converter from
the 24 V DC supplied by the AC adapter.
The 24 V for the print head is only supplied to the head during
printing with the turning ON of a FET by the head-on signal. In
addition, since the print head voltage affects the density of print-
ing, the voltage changes are controlled within 3%.
The D-D converter IC supplies 12 V to the motor system and 5
V to the head driver and USB systems.
From the 5 V created by the D-D converter IC, 3.3 V is created
by a series regulator, and 1.9 V is created from that 3.3 V by a
series regulator.
2-2.Motor driver section
IC 951 is a driver for the stepping motor that drives the platen
roller.
If there is an abnormality in the rotation of the stepping motor,
printing irregularities will occur.
The stepping motor has 24 V drive.
IC 952 is the ink ribbon driver, and that drives the ink rev and in
the ink cassette.
They ink ribbon motor has 12 V drive.
IC 953 is the head position motor driver, and rotates to put the
cam into various positions for standby, paper ejection, paper
and ribbon feed, paper supply, and printing.
The head position motor has 12 V drive.
12 V is applied without alteration to the fan drive, and it is turned
ON and OFF by a FET.
2-3.Main circuit
IC 101 is the CPU, and IC 102 is ASIC.
The CPU clock of 16.67 MHz is created by X11101, and it is
increased to 133.67 MHz within the CPU for operation.
The BUS clock is 66 MHz, and the ASIC operates on that 66
MHz.
For CPU resetting, IC 106 has a threshold of 2.7 V, and when it
falls below 2.7 V, a reset is performed.
Flash memory IC 121 uses 1 MB, and programs and supple-
mentary data are stored in it.
Image data broken down into the cyan, magenta and yellow
components for printing is stored in SDRAM IC 103 and IC
104.
It is set up to be able to handle data for up to 12,000,000 pixels.
The ASIC is composed of a card interface section, print engine
section and JPEG expansion section.
IC 151 is the USB host, and internally it multiplies 12 MHz to 48
MHz for operation.
IC 153 is for current limiting of the USB terminal power supply.
