Maximum Performance of Thermal Printhead

摘要

There are two types of thermal printheads. One is a flat type which has the heater line situated on the ceramic substrate's flat surface. And the other is edge type printheads which have the heater line either on the corner edge or the edge (called "True Edge") of the head. Both corner and True edge type printheads offer straight pass capability, while flat heads do not. Using corner edge capability, an extremely high speed printhead has been developed. This is a printhead for in-line date-code printers. It has a printing speed of more than 40 inches per second. Also, a new high speed printhead for ID card printers has been developed. It has a print speed of more that three inches per second, using dye sublimation ribbons. It is a True Edge type printhead. Thus, performance of thermal printhead speeds are maximized by edge type heads. Construction of the printheads to achieve these high speeds will be introduced in this paper.