GB2131353A - Cheque printing apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

Cheque printing apparatus connected to a supermarket till receives data concerning the total amount of a customer's transaction. One of the customer's cheque forms is propelled through a guide channel 11 by a feed roller 18, past two print heads 30,32. The print heads 30,32 are staggered from each other in both vertical and horizontal directions. The print head 30 prints the amount of the transaction in words and in figures on one line of the cheque form, while the print head 32 prints payee and date information on another line of the cheque form. <IMAGE>

Description

SPECIFICATION Cheque printing apparatus This invention relates to apparatus for printing information on documents, and particularly on cheques.

A problem nowadays experienced in supermarkets and other stores is that when a customer arrives at a checkout or pay desk and wishes to pay for his or her purchases by cheque, delay is caused while he or she writes out the cheque. This is particularly aggravating to any further customers who may be queueing up to pay. One answer which has been proposed is to provide apparatus which will automatically print on the cheque information such as the name of the payee, the date and the total amount payable (derived from the till on which the various items purchased have been registered). The present application discloses various novel aspects of appar anus we have devised for this purpose.

In one of the several novel aspects, the present invention provides document printing apparatus comprising at least two print heads and means or moving a document and/or the print heads in a first direction relative to each other, the print heads being staggered in a second direction normal to the first so that they can print respective separate lines of text on the document. Preferably there is a single inked ribbon which is arranged to pass both print heads between the heads and the document. Preferably this ribbon passes first one head and then the other.

Preferably the print heads are staggered from each other in the first direction as well as the second, and the ribbon extends past the two heads in a direction which is slanted with respect to the first and second directions.

An apparatus embodying the above novel aspect and several others will now be described by way of example, referring to the accompanying drawings, wherein: Figure lisa diagrammatic plan view of the aparatus, Figures 2, 3 and 4 are sections on the lines il-ll, III-III and IV-IV respectively in Figure 1, not all parts being shown, Figure 5 is a block diagram of the electrical arrangement of the apparatus, and Figure 6 is an illustration of a cheque which can be printed by the apparatus.

Referring to Figures 1 to 3, the apparatus has a chassis 10 within which the electronic circuitry is located and on top of which are located most of the mechanical and electro-mechanical components.

These are of course normally covered by an outer case (not shown). The top and sides of the case have a longitudinal slot for allowing a cheque to pass through the apparatus, and this slot coincides with a guide channel 11 which comprises a platen formed by a plate 12, and a guide plate 14 behind it. These plates 12, 14 are upstanding from the chasis 10, parallel to each other and fairly close together. As a matter of convenience, one end 14a of the plate 14 extends at right angles and provides a mounting for a mains transformer 15 for powering the electronic circuitry.

The platen plate 12 has a vertical slot 16 extending upwards fom the chassis 10 for part of its height.

Through this slot, a resilient feed roller 18 protrudes into the guide channel 11, and forms a nip with a follower roller 20 which protrudes through a corresponding slot 22 in the plate 14. The feed roller 18 can be rotated in the direction indicated by the arrow A in Figure 1 by means of a motor 24 underneath it, within the chassis 10, in order to drive a cheque along the guide channel 11 in the direction of arrow B. At the upstream edge of the slot 22, the plate 14 is bent back to prevent the cheque snagging against it, as indicated at 26.

The guide plate 14 has a slanted slot 28, the upper end of which is generally above the follower roller slot 22 and the lower end of which is upstream of the slot 22. Mounted behind the plate 14 are two commercially available print heads 30,32, suitably of dot matrix type. These protrude through the slanted slot 28, so as to be able to print on a cheque passing through the guide channel 11, against the backing provided by the platen 12. The print heads 30,32 are mounted generally side-by-side, but they are staggered from each other in the vertical direction so as to be able to print respective separate lines on a cheque in the guide channel.

An exchangeable ribbon cassette 34 (which is also a commercially available item) is mounted on a mounting plate 36, underneath which is a motor 38 for driving the cassette. An inked ribbon 40 travels in a loop from the cassette 34, along the slanted slot 28 past the print heads 30,32, around two fixed or rotatable guide bobbins 42, and back to the cassette 34. As best seen from Figures 2 and 3 (in which the path ofthe ribbon 40 is indicated by dotted lines) the mounting plate 36, cassette 34 and guide bobbins 42 are all arranged on a slant, so that the ribbon 40 coincides with the slanted slot 28 and passes the staggered print heads 30,32 one after the other.

Two photosensors 44,46 are provided on the plate 14, in order to detect the presence of a cheque in the guide channel 11 so that the action of the apparatus can be controlled. Each photosensor comprises a light emitting diode (LED) and a photodiode or other light sensitive element to detect light from the LED reflected by a cheque in the guide channel. One sensor 44 is mounted on an end flange 1 4b of the plate 14, at the entrance to the guide channel (or it could alternatively be mounted on the outer case, not shown). The other sensor 46 is provided above the print head 30 and feed roller follower 20.

The electronic circuitry of the apparatus housed beneath the chassis 10, comprises a computer 48 (Figures 5) which advantageously makes use of one of the several devices now available in which a microprocessor, RAM (random access memory), mask-programmed ROM (read only memory) and I/O (input/output) circuits are all provided on a single chip. This receives data on input lines 52 from an electronic till 50 of the type nowadays often used at supermarket checkouts and store pay desks. A data acquisition circuit 54 is Icoated within the till and intercepts data being fed to the electronic display 56 of the till along bus 58.It is an easy matter for the data acquisition circuit to detect when the till is displaying a final total value (rather than some intermediate value) since the display will in general have a special symbol indicating this fact and the data line or lines 58 activating this symbol can be intercepted. The data acquisition circuit then signals to the computer 48 on one of the lines 52 that it is ready to transmit data. The computer acknowledges, and the data representing the total amount of the customer's purchase is transferred down the lines 52, ready for use if the customer decides to pay by cheque.

When a cheque is placed in the entrance to the guide channel 11, the sensor 44 detects this and signals the computer 48 to turn on the feed roller motor 24. As the cheque is inserted, it is nipped between the feed roller 18 and the follower 20 and transported along the guide channel in the direction of arrow B. The cheque is inserted in the channel upside down, and facing the print heads. When the leading edge of the cheque is sensed by the second sensor 46, the computer initiates the printing action.

As a first stage, it switches on the ribbon cassette motor 38 (or this could have been done previously in response to the signal from the first sensor 44) so as to transport the ribbon 40 along the slanted slot 28 past the print heads 30,32.

The information to be printed on the cheque falls into four areas, shown outlined in chain-dotted lines in Figure 6, and these lie on two separate lines corresponding to the two print heads 30, 32. The upper print head 30 prints the amount of the purchase in figures in an area 62 and in words in an area 64. The lower print head 32 prints the date in an area 66 and the name of the payee in an area 68. The print heads do this under direct control of the computer 48, through appropriate drivers 60. For this purpose, the computer is not only deciding what information is to be printed at what stage, but also has software to control the actual formation of the characters by the dot matrix print heads, using a character generator in its ROM.

In the areas 62 and 64, it is obviously a straightforwad programming task to convert the data received from the till into appropriate signals to cause the print head 30 to print corresponding words and figures. There are two ways in which the data for printing the date in area 66 can be derived. Either date information can be intercepted from the till by the acquisition circuit 54, and input by the computer 48 when it is switched on at the start of each day.

Alternatively, the computer 48 can have a built-in timer and calendar, with a rechargeable battery back-up, so that the date information is always available. The payee information in area 68 will in general be fixed (e.g. the name of the operator of the supermarket where the equipment is installed) and can be stored in the ROM, or in RAM with a rechargeable battery back-up. As the cheque is running through the apparatus upside down and in the direction of arrow B (Figure 6), it will be appreciated that all this information must be printed upside down and with the characters in reverse order.Again, this is a quite straightforward programming rask - upside down characters, for example are simply a matter of programming the character generator accordingly (or installing the print heads upside down), and characters can be read in reverse orderfrom a buffer in RAM.

The program stored and run by the computer causes the following actions. A preset short time after the sensor 46 indicates the passing of the leading edge 70 of the cheque, the upper print head 30 starts to print the total amount of the purchase in figures in area 62. As the cheque is moved steadily on by the feed roller, the upper print head moves on to the area 64 where it prints the amount in words. In between, it is possible for the print head 30 to print a horizontal line or a row of x's, in order to satisfy the customer that his cheque cannot be fraudulently altered.

After a predetermined time from the start of the action of the upper print head 30, the lower print head 32 starts to print the date information 66. The time delay is determined by the software, and depends on the paper speed, the horizontal separation of the print heads, and the precise desired locations of the various areas to be printed. The lower print head then goes on to print the payee information 68, during which the upper print head will finish printing the amount-in-words area 64.

Eventually, the trailing edge 72 of the cheque will be detected by the sensor 46 and the computer will turn off the motors 24, 38 and re-initialise itself ready to receive more data from the till.

It will be appreciated that such matters as different spacings between the print heads and different positioning of the feed roller 18 in relation to the print heads can be accommodated if it is desired to produce a modified apparatus, by correspondingly modifying the time delays produced by the computer program. For example, whereas in the present embodiment the feed roller 18 pushes the cheque past the print heads, it could be arranged to pull it past them, e. g. so that the characters are not printed in reverse order. In this case, the cheque could pass through the guide channel in the opposite direction and the sensor 44 could be at the other end of the guide channel.

By using two staggered print heads as shown, it has been found possible to satisifactorily print out information on the vast majority of cheque forms issued by the banks to private customers, despite a certain amount of difference in the precise layout of different cheque forms.

The connecting line 52 between the till and the present apparatus can utilise any of the data transfer protocols which are available. For example, it may be a ribbon cable for parallel transfer of data, with sutiable strobe and acknowledgement lines. However, serial transfer is slightly preferred, because the cables are less likely to give problems in a supermarket environment. In either case, the data acquisition circuit 54 will include suitable buffers and data transfer control circuitry, including a parallel-toserial converter if serial transfer is used. It is most preferable, whatever method is used, that some means of checking the integrity of the data should be provided. In the case of serial transfer, the data acquisition circuit can transmit cyclic redundancy check bytes with the data, which the computer 48 can check. In the case of parallel transfer, one of the parallel lines can be a "test enable" line, used by the computer in a test routine whenever the apparatus is first switched on to instruct the circuit 54 to send test bytes down the lines 52. With appropriate circuitry in the data acquisition circuit 54, the test routine may also involve the computer sending test bytes to the circuit 54, which can be reflected back again for checking.

The data acquisition circuit 54 may be built in to new tills, or may be an add-on circuit for fitting to existing tills.

Claims (9)

1. Document printing apparatus comprising at least two print heads and means for moving a document and/or the print heads in a first direction relative to each other, the print heads being staggered in a second direction normal to the first so that they can print respective separate lines of text on the document.

2. Document printing apparatus according to claim 1 wherein there is a single inked ribbon which is arranged to pass both print heads between the heads and the document.

3. Document printing apparatus according to claim 2 wherein said ribbon passes first one head and then the other.

4. Document printing apparatus according to claim 2 or claim 3 wherein the print heads are staggered from each other in the first direction as well as the second, and the ribbon extends past the two heads in a direction which is slanted with respect to the first and second directions.

5. Document printing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 3 wherein the print heads are staggered from each other in the first direction as well as the second.

6. Document printing apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims having means for inputting data from external apparatus, at least one of the print heads being arranged to print information derived from external data received thereby.

7. Document printing apparatus according to claim 6, which is arranged to print a cheque, the means for inputting external data being arranged to receive data from a till concerning the amount of a transaction.

8. Document printing apparatus substantially as described herein with reference to the accompanying drawings.

9. Document printing apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims, in combination with a till, the document printing apparatus being connected to the till so as to receive therefrom data concerning the amount of a transaction, at least one of the print heads being arranged to print information derived from said data.