5 Mar
2013
5 Mar
'13
2:57 p.m.
The most interesting printer I've seen was an
Epson MX-80 (I _think_).
I thought that was the TX80. The same mechanism was used in the Commodore
2022 and 2023 printers IIRC
~
What made it interesting was how it was driven. The
print head had a pin
in the bottom of it that followed a spiral groove cut in a spinning
cylinder that went the width of the printer. Very neat to watch. :)
It's more complicated than that. There are 2 threads of differnet
pitches in that sylinder -- and of opposite handedness. The 'pin'
actually has a follower on theen. as the cylinder rotates -- always i
nthe same direction, the head moves on the finer pitch from left to right
and then o nteh coarser pitch from right to left to give a faster
carriage return (it only prints in one direction).
I have a couple of spare mechanisms for that printer somewhere.
-tony