Pivotable ink ribbon cassette and a printer

摘要

An ink ribbon cassette (10) is pivotally mounted to a printer (50). An ink ribbon (14) is accommodated in the ink ribbon cassette and is caused to travel by a ribbon feed roller (20) driven by a drive shaft provided in the printer. Printing operation is carried out at the cassette end arm portion (18) by a printing head (54), while the cassette end arm portion is reciprocatingly moved in the widthwise direction of the ink ribbon (14) relative to the fixed printing head (54) by an actuating mechanism (26,28,30,32,34) so that a printing region of the ink ribbon is diffused and becomes wider than a printing width of the printing head. The actuating mechanism includes a small gear (26) integral with the ribbon feed roller, a cam (30) driven by the small gear, and a lever (34) engaging with the cam.