Thermal printing graded heating control method based on row weight of adjacent points
Through the thermal printing graded heating control method based on the weight of adjacent dot rows, the problem of uneven printing quality caused by the mutual influence between heating points is solved, and high-precision and high-quality printing effects are achieved.
Patent Information
- Application Number
- CN202510903794.0
- Authority / Receiving Office
- CN · China
- Patent Type
- Applications(China)
- Current Assignee / Owner
- Filing Date
- 2025-07-01
- Publication Date
- 2025-10-17
AI Technical Summary
Existing thermal printers do not fully consider the mutual influence between heating points during the design and control process, resulting in uneven printing quality and making it difficult to meet high-precision and high-quality printing requirements.
A graded heating control method for thermal printing based on adjacent point row weights is adopted. By determining the filtering matrix and the number of heating grades, convolution operation is performed to obtain heating parameters, and the heating gating time is determined according to the heating domain data and the parameters of the thermal heating head, so as to achieve fine control.
It improves print quality, eliminates thermal interference between heating points, and achieves high-precision, high-quality printing results.
Smart Images
Figure CN120792349A_ABST
Abstract
Description
TECHNICAL FIELD
[0001] The present application relates to the technical field of print control, and particularly relates to a thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent point row weights. BACKGROUND
[0002] At present, common thermal printers realize printing functions by cooperating with special thermal printing paper. The working principle is to heat each heating point by using a thermal print head, so that a corresponding position on the thermal color developing paper generates a color developing reaction.
[0003] However, in actual work, each heating point does not operate independently, and there is heat conduction and heat interference between adjacent heating points, and the mutual influence is significant. If the thermal influence generated by the surrounding heating points is not fully considered in the printing control process, the printed characters will have quality problems such as uneven color density and inconsistent character clarity. However, most existing thermal printers lack comprehensive consideration and effective response mechanisms for the mutual influence factors between heating points in the design and control process, resulting in poor overall printing quality and difficulty in meeting high-precision and high-quality printing requirements. To solve the above problems, the technical personnel in the field have developed various heating control printing technologies.
[0004] Conventional printing control technologies usually only control according to the data of each heating point in the current point row and the data of each point in the previous point row. Although some optimized heating control schemes include subsequent point row data in the reference range, these technologies still cannot achieve fine control of the printing points in application scenarios with high requirements for printing effects, and cannot eliminate the adverse effects of the mutual influence between heating points, and cannot achieve ideal printing effects.
[0005] Therefore, the present application is designed to solve the above problems. SUMMARY
[0006] To solve the above problems, the technical scheme of the present application is as follows: A thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent point row weights, comprising: S1, determining a filter matrix and a heating hierarchical number required for calculation; S2, obtaining current point row data and surrounding point row data according to the filter matrix level; S3, performing convolution operation on the current and surrounding point row data by using the filter matrix, to obtain a heating parameter corresponding to each point in the current point row; S4, performing hierarchical processing on the current point row data according to the heating parameter of each point in the current heating point row and the selected heating hierarchical number, to determine the data of each heating domain; S5, determining whether segmentation is needed according to the calculated heating area data and the thermal sensitive heating head parameters; S6, obtaining the heating gating time of the data according to the last data and the current data points, voltage and temperature; S7, sending the data of each data group to the thermal sensitive printing head and heating using the corresponding gating time.
[0007] Preferably, the matrix in step S1 is selected as: S11, selecting a filter matrix of generally 3 orders according to the target of the printing effect to be achieved , or a filter matrix of 5 orders The matrix can be adjusted according to the actual effect, and the heating classification number is 4, which can be adjusted according to the actual effect.
[0008] S21, the way of selecting the number of point rows around the current printing point row according to the order of the filter matrix is that, for a three-order matrix, the upper and lower adjacent point rows of the current point row are selected, and for a five-order matrix, each two point rows adjacent to the upper and lower of the current point row are selected. The data group finally corresponds to 3 point rows of data of the current point row plus the adjacent upper and lower point rows for a three-order matrix, and 5 point rows of data of the current point row plus the adjacent two upper and lower point rows for a five-order matrix.
[0009] Preferably, in step S3, the heating parameter mode of each point is: S31, using the data composed of each point and its surrounding points to do convolution operation with the selected filter matrix to calculate the heating parameter. For example, assuming that the heating value of a point is 1 and the non-heating value is 0, the current point is , the filter matrix uses a three-order matrix as an example, the data composed of each point and its surrounding points is , and the three-order matrix is The convolution result is: ; Among them, is the weight parameter in the current filter matrix, such as 1, 0.5 and 0.25 in the state of a three-order filter matrix.
[0010] Preferably, in step S4, the determination mode of the related data of the current point row classification heating area is: After calculating the related heating parameters of each point of the current printing point, the corresponding heating points in each heating area are determined according to the heating parameter value range and the selected heating classification number. For example, assuming that the maximum value of the heating parameter is , the minimum value is , and the heating classification number is N , then the span value of each level is , and the heating parameters are located in , ], …, ( , Each of the dots in the dot matrix constitutes a corresponding heating area data group. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS
[0011] The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a further understanding of the application and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this application, illustrate embodiments of the application and together with the description serve to explain the application. In the drawings:
[0012] Wherein: Figure 1 is a structural schematic diagram of a thermal printing head in the prior art; Figure 2 is a printing picture matrix schematic diagram in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 3 is a heating schematic diagram of only a self dot in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 4 is a heating schematic diagram of two dots of a self dot and a surrounding dot row in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 5 is a specification sheet example diagram provided by a thermal head factory in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 6 is a flow chart of a thermal printing hierarchical heating control method in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 7 is a schematic diagram of a 3-order and 5-order filtering matrix and heating data dots in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 8 is a printing effect schematic diagram using a conventional printing control method; Figure 9 is a printing effect schematic diagram using the thermal printing hierarchical heating control method in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 10 is a specification sheet example diagram provided by a factory in embodiment 1 of the present application; Figure 11 is a hardware connection principle block diagram in embodiment 2 of the present application; Figure 12 is a printing software control flow schematic diagram in embodiment 2 of the present application; DETAILED DESCRIPTION
[0013] In order to make the technical problems to be solved by the present application, the technical solutions and beneficial effects more clear, specific embodiments will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings and embodiments. It should be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are only used to explain the present application and do not limit the present application. Embodiment 1
[0014] Please refer to Figures 1 to 10 , which is a thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weight as the best embodiment of the present application.
[0015] like Figure 1 The figure shows a schematic diagram of the thermal print head structure. According to the principle of the thermal print head, the print head is a group of high-density heating resistor arrays. After power is turned on, the resistor array quickly heats up and transfers the heat of the resistors to the thermal paper with a heat-sensitive coating. The coating changes color when heated, and the pattern is displayed.
[0016] Based on this, combined with the motor structure, the heating is carried out line by line to display the complete pattern on the thermal paper. According to this principle, after each point is heated, the heat is radiated to the surrounding area according to the principle of heat conduction, and the heat conducted decreases with distance. The principle of the thermal print head printing pattern is to print the picture matrix (combined with Figure 2 ).
[0017] The points around a point may have an impact on it, so the heating point and its surrounding points are selected to form the heating effect display matrix of the point. If only one circle of points is taken, it is a third order, and two circles of points are taken, it is a fifth order (combined with Figure 2 ).
[0018] Figure 6 A flowchart of a thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights provided by the first embodiment of the present invention.
[0019] S1. Determine the filter matrix and the number of heating stages required for calculation; Select a matrix of relevant levels according to the printing effect target to be achieved. Generally, the larger the matrix level, the finer the control, but at the same time, the higher the system requirements. Usually, you can choose a 3rd order matrix or a 5th order matrix. The determination of the matrix depends on the actual system. In this embodiment, the 3rd order filter matrix is taken as , 5th order filter matrix , the matrix can be adjusted according to the actual effect, which represents the weight of each adjacent point of the current point.
[0020] The weight determination process is as follows: The establishment of each heating point and its weight needs to be determined according to the actual head piece and the type of thermal paper used. The general rule is that the center heating point has the largest weight, and the farther away from the midpoint, the smaller its influence on the center point. After calculating the weight matrix for each point, use this matrix to test the actual heating and printing effect. Adjust each weight coefficient. You can first adjust it by increasing or decreasing by 0.2, and then fine-tune it by increasing or decreasing by 0.01. Use the one that works best. The more precise the control, the higher the matrix order.
[0021] Select the heating level number according to the printing effect target to be achieved. The larger the heating level number, the finer the controllable heating time level. In this description, 4 is used as the heating level number.
[0022] Quantitative hierarchical logic of heating hierarchical number: Take three orders Exemplified in the case: in this case, the current heating point and its surrounding points may be as follows: (1) as shown in Figure 3 , only self-heating, in this case, the heating coefficient ;
[0023] (2) as shown in Figure 4 , it can be inferred that the heating coefficient in these cases is: ;
[0024] By analogy, take all possible heating coefficient cases, there are the following values: 1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2, 2.25, 2.5, 2.75, 3, 3.25, 3.5, 3.75, 4; It can be seen that in theory, these heating points should have 13 cases in all possible cases, and should be divided into 13 levels, and in the case of reasonable weight value, it can be approximately considered that the heating effect produced at this point is the same when the heating coefficient is equal. But considering that too many levels mean that the same point line needs to be heated quite a few times, which will affect the speed, so in actual application, the level can be appropriately reduced, taking into account the printing speed and printing effect. For example, take 4 levels, and the heating coefficients are in [1, 1.75], (1.75, 2.5], (2.5, 3.25], (3.25, 4] respectively. Of course, for different print head pieces and thermal paper matching conditions, the value of the matrix and the hierarchical strategy should be adjusted according to the actual effect.
[0025] S2, according to the filter matrix order to obtain the current point line data and the surrounding point line data; The data group is composed of: The way to select the number of point lines around the current printing point line according to the order of the filter matrix is: three-order matrix selects the adjacent point lines above and below the current point line, and five-order matrix selects each two point lines above and below the current point line. The data group is finally composed of three-order matrix corresponding to the current point line plus adjacent upper and lower point line data, and five-order point line corresponding to the current point line plus adjacent upper and lower two point line data.
[0026] S3, using the filter matrix to operate the current point line data and the surrounding point line data to obtain the heating coefficient corresponding to each point of the current point line; The heating parameter calculation method of each point under the current heating point line is: The data composed of each point and its surrounding points is convoluted with a selected filter matrix to calculate the heating coefficient. For example, assuming that a point has a heating value of 1 and a non-heating value of 0, the current point is , the filter matrix uses a third-order matrix as an example, the data composed of each point and its surrounding points is , and the third-order matrix is The convolution result is ;
[0027] wherein is a weight parameter in the current filter matrix, such as 1, 0.5, and 0.25 in the case of a third-order filter matrix.
[0028] For example, the matrix is taken as a third-order matrix , the data composed of the current point and its surrounding points is , wherein 1 is a point heating and 0 is a point non-heating, and the heating coefficient of the point is ;
[0029] S4, according to the heating parameter of each point in the current heating point row and the selected heating classification number, the data of each heating domain is determined. After the relevant heating parameters of each point in the current printing point are calculated, the corresponding heating points in each heating domain are determined according to the heating parameter value range and the selected heating classification number. For example, assuming that the maximum value of the heating parameter is , the minimum value is , and the heating classification number is N, then the span value of each level is , and the points with heating parameters located in , , …, , each form a group of corresponding heating domain data.
[0030] According to this condition, when the data is all 1, i.e. , is ;
[0031] When the surrounding data is all 0, i.e. , is ;
[0032] In this example, the classification number is 4, and the span value of each level is ; After calculation, the heating coefficients in [1, 1.75], (1.75, 2.5], (2.5, 3.25], (3.25, 4] are in the same heating domain, and a unified heating basic time is used in the same heating domain , in turn , , , , the smaller the heating coefficient represents the smaller the comprehensive heat, and the longer the basic heating time required, wherein should be larger, minimum.
[0033] S5, according to the calculated heating domain data and the thermal sensitive heating head parameters to determine whether it needs to be segmented; According to the current capacity of the thermal sensitive heating head (usually provided by the thermal sensitive heating head specification book), determine the number of segments, as follows: As Figure 5 shown is an example of the thermal head specification book provided by the manufacturer, from which the thermal head current calculation formula can be obtained: ; Assume that the thermal head voltage is 7.2V, and the number of heating points is 384, the current required is about 11.6A. The rated current of the adapter used is usually not able to meet this condition, for example, the maximum current can be 6A. In this case, the number of simultaneous heating points needs to be reduced to meet the requirements of the adapter, for example, the number of simultaneous heating points can be reduced to 192, which can meet the requirements.
[0034] Therefore, in the case of using, for example, this thermal head, and using the algorithm mentioned in this embodiment, if the number of points in the same heating classification exceeds 192 points, the heating classification needs to be segmented for heating processing to meet the hardware requirements.
[0035] S6, according to the last data, the heating domain basic time and the current data points, voltage, temperature to obtain the heating gating time of its data; Regarding the temperature compensation heating time correction, it is recommended to adjust according to the heating time reference under various conditions mentioned in the thermal head specification book provided by the thermal head manufacturer and the actual printing effect, for example, as shown in Figure 10 .
[0036] S7, send each data group data to the thermal printing head and use the corresponding gating time for heating; Finally, according to the data that needs to be transmitted to the thermal printing head at a time, and the conditions such as voltage, temperature, etc., to determine the final heating time of the corresponding heating domain.
[0037] The method introduces different basic heating time values of each heating area by calculating the current point row and the corresponding points in the adjacent point row with the calculation of the related weight, calculating the current point row comprehensive heating area coefficient, combining the remaining heat-sensitive printing conditions, and realizing more fine heating effect time printing control effect, solving the problem of poor printing effect of heat-sensitive dot matrix printing.
[0038] In combination Figure 8 , Figure 9 , Figure 8 The printing effect under the control of the conventional printing control method, Figure 9 The printing effect after using the heat-sensitive printing hierarchical heating control method of the embodiment, so it can be known that the embodiment realizes more fine and high-quality heat-sensitive printing effect control by quantifying the surrounding point heat conduction influence, optimizing the heating hierarchical strategy, combining the hardware restriction segmented control and the temperature compensation mechanism. Embodiment 2
[0039] As Figure 11 shown, a system for realizing a heat-sensitive printing hierarchical heating control method includes a printer control chip, a printer core head piece group (including a heat-sensitive head), a control chip peripheral circuit, a power module, and a printing software host computer. The printer control chip executes matrix operation, hierarchical segmentation, and time correction algorithm, and controls the printer core head piece group through hardware connection. The power module supplies power for the printer core head piece group and the printer control chip. The printing software host computer is used to send printing related instructions.
[0040] In combination Figure 12 , the printer software control process is as follows: Step one, the printer chip (i.e. the printer control chip) accepts a printing instruction; Step two, the printer chip converts the instruction into a printing dot matrix bitmap; Step three, the printer chip sends the dot matrix bitmap into the heating control algorithm to obtain point row data and heating time; Step four, the data is sent into the printer core head piece group and the printing time is set through the printer core drive to realize row-by-row printing; Step five, the printing is completed.
[0041] The above has exemplarily described the present application in combination with the drawings, and it is obvious that the specific implementation of the present application is not limited by the above manner. Any non-essential improvement or direct application of the concept and technical solution of the present application to other occasions without improvement is within the protection scope of the present application.
Claims
1. A thermal printing graded heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights, characterized in that: include: S1. Determine the filter matrix and the number of heating stages required for calculation; S2. Obtain the current point row data and the surrounding point row data according to the filter matrix level; S3, using the filter matrix to perform convolution operation on the current and surrounding point row data to obtain the heating parameters corresponding to each point in the current point row; S4, classifying the data of the current point row according to the heating parameters of each point in the current heating point row and the selected heating classification number to determine the data of each heating domain; S5. Determine whether segmentation is required based on the calculated heating domain data and the thermal heating head parameters; S6. Obtain the heating gating time of the data according to the last data and the number of current data points, voltage, and temperature; S7. Send each data group data to the thermal print head and use the corresponding strobe time to heat it.
2. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 1, characterized in that: In step S1, the filter matrix is selected to be of order 2N+1, where N is a positive integer.
3. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 2, characterized in that: The filter matrix is a 3rd order filter matrix , or a 5th-order filter matrix .
4. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 1, characterized in that: Step S1 further includes: S11. Select the heating level number according to the printing effect target to be achieved. The larger the heating level number, the finer the controllable heating time level.
5. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 3, characterized in that: Step S2 further includes: S21. The method of selecting the number of dot rows surrounding the current printing dot row according to the order of the filter matrix is as follows: for a third-order matrix, the dot rows above and below the current dot row are selected; for a fifth-order matrix, two dot rows above and below the current dot row are selected; The data is finally composed of a third-order matrix corresponding to the current point row plus the adjacent upper and lower point rows, a total of 3 point rows of data, and a fifth-order point row corresponding to the current point row plus the adjacent upper and lower point rows, a total of 5 point rows of data.
6. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 5, characterized in that: In step S3, the heating parameters of each point under the current heating point row are calculated as follows: S31. Use the data composed of each point and its surrounding points to perform convolution operation with the selected filter matrix to calculate the heating parameters.
7. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 6, characterized in that: After calculating the relevant heating parameters for each point of the current printing point, the span value of each level is calculated according to the heating parameter value range and the selected heating level number, and the corresponding heating point in each heating domain is determined according to the span value.
8. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 7, characterized in that: The calculation process of the span value at each level and the confirmation process of each group of heating domain data are as follows: The maximum value of the heating parameter is , the minimum value is , the number of heating stages is N , then the span value of each level can be obtained ; The heating parameters are located in [ , ],……,( , ] each constitutes a set of corresponding heating domain data.
9. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 7, characterized in that: According to conditions such as the current capacity that the thermal heating head can withstand, it is determined whether the points included in the heating domain need to be processed in sections.
10. The thermal printing hierarchical heating control method based on adjacent dot row weights according to claim 8, characterized in that: Finally, the heating time of the corresponding heating zone is determined based on the data that needs to be transmitted to the thermal print head at one time, as well as voltage, temperature and other conditions.