METHOD OF ADJUSTING STROBE LENGTH IN A THERMAL PRINTER TO REDUCE EFFECTS OF CHANGES IN MEDIA TRANSPORT SPEED

摘要

A thermal printing apparatus and a method of controlling a thermal printing apparatus is provided wherein the duration of the strobe pulse utilized to transfer the ink from the carrier film (24) to the media (18) is controlled and adjusted by a correction factor. The correction factor is calculated by the printer controller (26) based directly on feedback regarding the actual transport time required to advance the media (18) between encoder steps. Generally, the present invention controls a thermal printer in a manner that accounts for the transport speed between each encoder step and applies the correction factor to the strobe signal duration in a manner that maintains a uniform print density.