MULTICOLOR THERMAL TRANSFER TYPE PRINTER

PURPOSE:To achieve the effective use of an ink ribbon and the miniaturization of an apparatus, by a method wherein rectangular patterns repeatedly printed and applied to an ink sheet at every m-colors (m>=3) are set to an arbitrary paper size An or Bn of an A- or B-system standard and continuous rectangular patterns are transferred to a material to be transferred having an An+1 or Bn+1 size m-times two at a time. CONSTITUTION:Ink rectangular patterns 12, 14, 16 of cyan, magenta and yellow are continuously printed and applied to an ink sheet in predetermined order in the longitudinal direction and each of them has a standard size (herein, an A4 size) and the long side thereof is set to the lateral direction of the ink sheet. Numerals 18, 20 respectively show the supply and take-up sides of the ink sheet. When a three-color pattern of 'A' is printed on paper 22 having an A3 size, first printing transfer is performed on the basis of two rectangular patterns because the pattern of each color is an A4 size. In a second printing transfer, the yellow color signal of the 'A' pattern with respect to the first half of the paper is sent to a head 56 from a printing signal memory 36 to print an yellow color on a first cyan color and, in the same way, the 'A' pattern of the cyan color is printed on a magenta color with respect to the latter half of the paper. Hereinafter, third printing is performed in an overlapped state in the same way.