Method for controlling a thermal printer to increase resolution

摘要

A method for controlling binary thermal printers increases the effective output resolution of the thermal printer above the native resolution of a print head having a plurality of individual resistive heating elements arranged in a print line. An increase in the effective resolution of a binary output image is achieved by using an over-drive energy to control a relative position of a binary edge of a pixel image at a resolution that is less than the native resolution of the thermal printer. In a preferred embodiment, an under-drive energy may also be used with an adjacent over-drive energy to further control the relative position of the binary image of the pixel image. The over-drive energy is higher than a native pixel drive energy, but lower than a maximum drive energy. The native pixel drive energy produces a binary pixel image having a native area corresponding to the native resolution of the thermal printer. The binary pixel image on the print media corresponding to the heating elements to which the over-drive energy is applied are increased in area beyond the native area of the thermal printer, thereby enabling the thermal printer to realize an increase in an effective resolution of the binary image.