THERMAL LINE PRINTER AND DRIVING METHOD THEREOF

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To suppress deterioration of print quality, e.g. uneven density, by dividing the heaters in a thermal line head into n blocks, forming m groups from n blocks and driving the m groups sequentially thereby feeding a sheet less than 1 dot. SOLUTION: A thermal line head 3 comprises 384 (64 dots × 6 blocks) heaters R arranged laterally in a row and heaters R in each print block are driven selectively through a select circuit 33 depending on strobe signals STB 1-STB6 from a CPU and the print dot data of a latch register 32. A line of heaters R are divided into a plurality (e.g. six) of print blocks and in order to conduct them individually, the select circuit 33 is also divided into six blocks. Each block comprises 64 NAND gates 33a,... which is the same number as the dots printable at one print block.