THERMAL PRINT HEAD, DRIVING IC USED THEREFOR, AND CONTROL METHOD OF THERMAL PRINT HEAD

摘要

A plurality of driving ICs (7) are mounted on a thermal print head (1) equipped with a predetermined number of heating dots (3). The number of output bits of each driving IC (7) is a divisor of 1/4 of the number of heating dots (3) and is set to a multiple of 8 not smaller than 48. Therefore, a plurality of driving ICs (7) can be grouped into two or four groups, and each group can be subjected to time division control. When the number of output bits of each driving IC (7) is set to a common divisor of 1/4 and 1/3 of the number of heating dots (3), the thermal print head (1) can be controlled by 3-division control in addition to 2-division control and 4-division control. More concretely, the number of output bits of each driving IC (7) is preferably set to 72, 144 or 216, particularly preferably to 144.