Procedure and equipment for recognising the functional status of a ribbon in a printer, in particular in a travel agency printer

摘要

The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for detecting the operational state of an ink ribbon in a printer, in particular in a printer in a travel agency. The said ink ribbon is conveyed via an electric rotary actuator motor which is connected to the drive shaft of an ink ribbon cartridge, the magnitude of the transmitting drive force being inferred from the current taken up by the rotary actuator motor. According to the invention it is proposed that predetermined threshold values of the current characteristic (12) are detected during a measuring period (11) in which the rotary actuator motor (4) is operated in a pulsed manner, that, during this process, the value of the motor current pulse is compared with the threshold value in an evaluation unit (7), and that whenever the threshold value is exceeded a change in level takes place at the output of the evaluation unit (7) so that the resulting clock sequence is counted in a microprocessor (8) and used for the measurement result and for a display which is dependent thereon. IMAGE