THERMAL TRANSFER PRINTER AND THERMAL TRANSFER PRINTER SYSTEM

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a thermal transfer printer capable of correctly predicting a replacement timing of a head even in the case of using an ink ribbon with a special color such as gold or silver.SOLUTION: A PC 2 of a printer system S includes a printer driver 2a for calculating a degree of wear of a print head 17 by calculating a grand total of print distance of individual print color of ink ribbons 11-16 having plural print colors including a basic color and special colors whose thermal conductivity is different from that of the basic color. Further, the printer driver 2a converts the print distance by multiplying a head-loss coefficient determined correspondingly to a special color and the print distance of the special color, to calculate the grand total by using the post-conversion print distance.