Thermal Smart Control - intelligent control of the temperature of the print head

The bar code printers of the Taiwanese manufacturer TSC have one interesting feature for several years that few people notice at first glance. It is "Thermal Smart Control", the intelligent temperature control of each individual point of the print head. How does this mechanism work and what are its advantages?

Let's see how a common thermal head of a common barcode printer works. To draw a line with a thickness of 3 points, one specific point of the print head needs to be ideally turned off for the first time, then turned on three times, and finally turned off again in five consecutive time cycles. But in reality it is different, the temperature of the heated point has inertia. In the second time cycle, it is not yet as warm as it should be. While in the fifth time cycle, when the point should already be switched off, it is still catching up to cool down from the previous switched on state.

Also note that the overall temperature of the print head is constantly increasing. After only a short time, it will overheat. This has a major impact on the lifetime of the print dots.

Now, let's watch in the second picture how the Thermal Smart Control works. The printer processor looks at the entire label to be printed before anything actually happens. It mentally divides it into time zones, how it will turn on and off the individual points of the print head during the next print. And it changes the whole matrix. It turns on the print points that were turned off in the previous cycle and should be turned on in the current cycle a little earlier and leaves them on a little longer than it should technically be. It turns on the print points that were already on in the previous cycle for a shorter time, because they already have some temperature. And if it is a print point that is on in the current cycle, but is supposed to be off in the next time cycle, the printer processor will turn it off much earlier than the print matrix says.

The printer's processor uses thermal inertia, so a line that is supposed to be 3 print points wide is actually drawn as three solid points. In addition, the temperature of the print head remains constant at all times, it does not increase as is usual with thermal printers of other brands.

As already mentioned, the printer uses less power to control the print head as a result than if it were to print in the usual way. On average, the consumption is reduced to 60% - 80% of the original value. Thanks to the fact that the print head does not overheat, its service life is extended several times. This is a big saving, remember that the print head is the most expensive part of any thermal printer!

So, in summary, if you buy a TSC brand printer to print barcodes, you will save a few crowns on consumed electricity every month, a few thousand on unpurchased print heads every year, and - as a bonus - your stickers will have a significantly sharper print.