Conventionally, there has been used a label of which desired characters are printed on a printed face on a front side, and which adheres to a desired place with an adhesive face on a back side thereof. The label is made by a label printer on which a cassette which houses a tape as a printing medium is freely mountable, and which has a printing device for printing characters and images of figures on the tape which is unwound from the cassette in accordance with data previously inputted. The tape which is printed by the label printer is a laminated tape comprising a printed layer, a separating layer and an adhesive layer to easily adhere to a predetermined place after printed. The adhesive layer is protected by the separating layer, so that the adhesive layer does not interfere with print operation, and the printed tape easily adheres to the desired place with the separating layer removed. There are various kinds of the tapes including a wide tape and a narrow tape which are used depending on purposes. Not only the cassette housing the wide tape but also the cassette housing the narrow tape can be set in the label printer. Accordingly, both the wide and narrow labels can be printed by the same label printer.
It has been believed that a limitation of a minimum width of the tape is 6 mm, because stiffness is lost from the tape which is narrower than 6 mm. The loss of the stiffness from the tape causes malfunctions such as a winding of the tape while the tape is fed, and misalignment of printing in a tape width direction. However, demands for the label which is narrower than 6 mm are increased with the purposes of the labels. In spite of the demands, the conventional label printer cannot steadily make the tape narrower than 6 mm because of the malfunctions described above.
To provide a label printer which can make a label having a narrow width, for example, a label which is narrower than 6 mm and formed by printing on a tape having a printed layer, an adhesive layer and a separating layer, there is proposed the label printer having a structure to perform printing on the tape in plural rows on small regions divided by a half cut line which is on the tape to divide the tape into two or more regions, and to cut and separate the printed plural rows in the tape as one piece. (See Japanese patent application laid-open No.2000-280551).
The conventional label printer having the above structure, however, cannot satisfy further requests by a user to make a plurality of the same labels, a plurality of the different labels together, and a plurality of combinations of different labels.
The label printer for making the label using the tape with the half cut line to divide the tape into two or more regions in the tape width direction has another advantage in addition to making the label which is narrower than 6 mm. There has been a case in which labels are different in spite of a relationship therebetween such as labels in a spine and a cover of a binder binding paper documents. In that case, the spine label and the cover label are made separately, and carried as two labels, which causes inconvenience to the user and risk of loss of the labels.
The two types of the labels which happen to be in same widths, and are made being unseparated and connected to each other are easily portable and stored rather than the above case, but it is feared that the labels become too long. Further, in case of three types of the labels, the labels become much longer than in case of the two types. As a natural result, the unseparated pattern of printing is the only one pattern as above, so that the user must choose this pattern without other choices.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds