IDENTIFICATION FOR THERMAL INK-JET CARTRIDGE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an apparatus for feeding electric information to a printer controller so as to identify one or a plurality of cartridges mounted in a printer. SOLUTION: This apparatus has a carriage 4 movable in a lateral direction to a movement of a printing medium passing a printer, a carriage-moving means and a replaceable cartridge 2 removably set to the carriage 4. The apparatus also includes an index device which is mounted to the replaceable cartridge and has an optically readable index marked on a surface. This index has encoded information including information for identifying a type of the cartridge loaded in the printer. This apparatus is equipped with an optical code reader 20 which reads the encoded information when the cartridge moves in the lateral direction to the reader 20 and transmits the information to a printer controller 12.