Natural rubber

Engineering

Heat transfer

Materials science

Geomorphology

Inkwell

Geology

Mechanical engineering

Thermodynamics

Physics

Rheometer

Ribbon

Head (geology)

Elasticity (physics)

Thermal

Composite material

Rheology

Engineering drawing

Mechanics

TRANSACTIONS OF THE JAPAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS Series C

The printing method of the thermal transfer printer is to push an ink ribbon that is heated and melted by a thermal print head to a printing paper, and transfer the ink desired positions on the paper. Thus it is important to place the heater of the thermal print head at the position where the contact pressure is most high. The visco elastic properties of the ink, PET and platen rubber were measured with a rheometer. The contact pressures on the thermal print head were calculated by FEM. The contact pressures under consideration of visco elasticity were different from those calculated by elastic analysis. The effect of sliding speed of the thermal print head on the contact pressures was also examined. To examine the effect of the contact pressure on the print quality the optical densities were measured with the heater positions of the thermal print head changed. The optical densities were changed with the heater positions. It can be found that the optical densities decreased with the calculated contact pressure.

Analysis of Contact Pressure Acting on a Thermal Print Head of a Thermal Transfer Printer