PRINTER

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a printer capable of achieving accurate protection of a power supply, preventing the power supply from being interrupted, and suppressing split printing caused by excessive protection of the power supply. SOLUTION: The printer includes: a printing element drive part that drives a plurality of printing elements; a monitoring part that monitors drive time of the plurality of printing elements; a current amount calculation part that calculates a current amount required by the printing element drive part based on the drive time monitored by the monitoring part; the power supply that supplies current to the printing element drive part; and a controller that stops the drive of the printing element drive part when the current amount calculated by the current amount calculation part reaches or exceeds a current upper limit value of the power supply and the current level of the printing element being driven is a fixed value. COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT