Method of positioning drum for precision printing

Claim 1

An improvement in a method of operating a printing machine wherein a cylindrical drum slidable axially in a preselected direction termed normal or in a reverse direction, and rotatable in a preselected direction termed normal or in a reverse direction and having characters on its cylindrical surface is positioned by pulse motors with reference to a printing hammer and an adjoining tape for printing on said tape and said hammer is then actuated to bring a selected character into contact with said tape, wherein said improvement comprises the steps of sliding said drum in the normal axial direction and rotating said drum in the normal rotational direction as the final steps in the positioning of said drum immediately prior to printing a character on said tape, said normal axial direction and normal rotational direction being the same for the printing of any of said characters, thereby minimizing errors in the positioning of said drum due to gear backlash, flexibility of machine components and imprecision in machine components which would result from bringing the drum into printing position from the reverse directions as well as from the normal directions.