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'[PIC]:Thermal Printer Question'
2000\10\03@154427 by Philip Addicott

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My next project requires a small thermal printer (+-50mm). I am quite new to
this micro thing and for the moment I do not have a clue of what I need or
how to send data to a device like this.
The finished product will need to produce between 50 and 100 receipts per
day and I think that a paper cutter is necessary.  I was planning to use a
18 pin PIC as there is very little other I/O is needed.

Questions.
Are some makes or types better than others for this application?
If so what are they and why.

Are all devices of this nature parallel?
and if so what code and I/O overhead is needed.

Can someone point me at a web site, or show me where to find what I need.
or
Should I look for something like an I2C device or similar.
Thanking you in advance
Philip.

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2000\10\03@160208 by David VanHorn

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At 09:01 PM 10/3/00 +0200, you wrote:
>My next project requires a small thermal printer (+-50mm). I am quite new to
>this micro thing and for the moment I do not have a clue of what I need or
>how to send data to a device like this.
>The finished product will need to produce between 50 and 100 receipts per
>day and I think that a paper cutter is necessary.  I was planning to use a
>18 pin PIC as there is very little other I/O is needed.


Danger will robinson.

I've done receipt printers.

Is this point of sale, or some other app?

You may need much larger buffer space than you're going to have in a single
chip.

Formatting text into graphics takes another chunk.

Is this a line printer or a shuttle printer?

How will you handle printhead loading? (needs to be very fast in line printers)

Print pulse timing needs to vary with printhead temperature and supply
voltage, unless you remove supply voltage variation.

Most line printer mechs I have seen have a step motor that needs driving,
and either another step motor for the printhead, (plus the printhead bits)
or clocked serial into the printhead, needing to load a few hundred bits
within the smaller part of a millisecond.

Depends greatly also on how fast you have to print. Customers like fast.

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2000\10\03@161308 by David Kott

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> My next project requires a small thermal printer (+-50mm). I am quite new
to
> this micro thing and for the moment I do not have a clue of what I need or
> how to send data to a device like this.
> The finished product will need to produce between 50 and 100 receipts per
> day and I think that a paper cutter is necessary.  I was planning to use a
> 18 pin PIC as there is very little other I/O is needed.
>
> Questions.
> Are some makes or types better than others for this application?
> If so what are they and why.

Not sure on what your application is.  Does it need to be easy loading?  Low
maintenance?  Cost effective?  Common Media?  Rugged like one finds in a POS
terminal?

>
> Are all devices of this nature parallel?
> and if so what code and I/O overhead is needed.

Certainly not.  Serial based receipt printers are quite common.

http://www.starmicronics.com/product/receipt/index.cfm

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2000\10\03@161517 by M. Adam Davis

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I saw, somewhere, a single chip solution to printing with these printers.  You
sent it a line of text, and it spit it out on these printers.

A pic should be able to handle it fine, but making a pic do that and something
else would require a little bit more effort.

As far as David's concerns about thermal and voltage sensitivity, I was under
the impression that many models have an optical sensor to tell you how far the
carriage has travelled, irrespective of temp and voltage.  Perhaps I'm wrong,
I've not used them before, just looked into using them.

-Adam

Philip Addicott wrote:
{Quote hidden}

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2000\10\03@162207 by David VanHorn

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>
> > Are all devices of this nature parallel?
> > and if so what code and I/O overhead is needed.
>
>Certainly not.  Serial based receipt printers are quite common.

I missed the meaning of this the first time around.

All non-PC receipt printers, except for a very few on specialized systems,
are serial.

You will likely need to learn to emulate a verifone P-250, which is itself
a broken emulation of an epson printer. Also some of the commands are
improperly documented, and even the P-250's bugs are used by some
customers, so you'll have to emulate those as well.

A couple years ago, I wrote a test suite in a Tranz-330 to test P250
emulation. I may still have the code.

Buy a couple cases of paper :)

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2000\10\03@162400 by Mitchell D. Miller
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Was he wanting to build a printer or just send data to a printer?  I got the
impression he wanted to send data to a pre-fab printer.

-- Mitch

{Original Message removed}

2000\10\03@163759 by M. Adam Davis

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There are printers (such as those available from digikey) which have no
controller or logic, and involve telling the printer which way to move the
motor(s) and operate the head and other guts.  The controllers are sold
seperately.

I thought that was what he was talking about when he said parallel...

-Adam

David VanHorn wrote:
{Quote hidden}

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2000\10\03@170513 by David VanHorn

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At 04:36 PM 10/3/00 -0400, M. Adam Davis wrote:
>There are printers (such as those available from digikey) which have no
>controller or logic, and involve telling the printer which way to move the
>motor(s) and operate the head and other guts.  The controllers are sold
>seperately.
>
>I thought that was what he was talking about when he said parallel...

The ones you're talking about (moving head) are called "shuttle" mechs.
The charachters are printed like a dot-matrix impact printer, only by
"burning" dots with an array of tiny resistors.

Line printers (with all the dots in paralell line) move only the paper.
Printing a full black like takes a pretty impressive gulp of power.

DK has both I think.

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2000\10\03@173904 by David VanHorn

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>
>As far as David's concerns about thermal and voltage sensitivity, I was under
>the impression that many models have an optical sensor to tell you how far the
>carriage has travelled, irrespective of temp and voltage.  Perhaps I'm wrong,
>I've not used them before, just looked into using them.

Shuttle mechs have head position switches or optos.
I was talking about the burn pulse width.
You have to compensate for printhead temperature (can be as much as 2-1)
and for supply voltage, unless you print from a regulated supply.

I used a regulated supply in the one I did, which is a little tricky.
We had a 18V 2A transformer, and I needed 32V at 19A. It also had to run on
a nominal 120VAC line, down to 70V and up to 140V.

A boost switcher, with carefully designed output caps signals the processor
when it has accumulated enough energy to print the next line.

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2000\10\04@044150 by Alan B. Pearce

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>Depends greatly also on how fast you have to print. Customers like fast.

especially when it is one of those danged cheap printers at the checkout that is obviously built to a price, and not a performance spec. These seem to print a line of dots without a moving printhead, and have to advance the paper to get the next line of dots. Eight paper advances later you have one row of characters!

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2000\10\04@122041 by David VanHorn

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>
>especially when it is one of those danged cheap printers at the checkout
>that is obviously built to a price, and not a performance spec. These seem
>to print a line of dots without a moving printhead, and have to advance
>the paper to get the next line of dots. Eight paper advances later you
>have one row of characters!

That is exactly how a thermal line printer works.
Ours was built to both.  At 1.2mS per line though, you perceive continuous
motion. Unless the AC line is lower than 110 V, and the printing is heavily
black, in which case I can't suck enough power out of the wall wart that we
had to use.

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