Selective energization of thermal printers

Claim 2

A head driving device for a continuous thermal transfer printer, comprising: a driving circuit for selectively turning on and off a plurality of heating resistors incorporated in a thermal transfer printer head a number of times during a pixel time interval having a midpoint, the number of on times of each heating resistor corresponding to density gradation data associated with each pixel of a line in an image to provide a desired density gradation for such image pixel; and said driving circuit including means for turning on and off each heating resistor at times uniformly and symmetrically distributed in time about the midpoint of each pixel time interval.

Claim 3

A head driving device for a thermal transfer printer as set forth in claim 1, wherein said driving circuit includes: a line memory for storing said density gradation data; a readout control circuit for causing said density gradation data to be read from said line memory a number of times corresponding to a pixel maximum density gradation; and a data processing unit for supplying said thermal transfer printer head with signals for selectively driving said plurality of heating resistors on the basis of said density gradation data contained in said density gradation data every time said transfer data are received from said line memory so that each of said heating resistors is driven a number of times during a pixel time interval corresponding to the density gradation data associated with the respective heating resistors, wherein the turning on and off of said heating resistors is performed at times uniformly distributed about the time center of each pixel time interval.