To provide a thermal transfer printer wherein it is unnecessary to replace an ink ribbon, even when the ink ribbon reaches a ribbon-end state, and unnecessary to continuously print in a transfer area from halfway on a recording medium in operation, thereby such the failure is prevented that a printed image in the transfer area is missing.
The thermal transfer printer includes: a platen roller 2; the recording medium; a thermal head 15 disposed facing the platen roller across the recording medium; and the ink ribbon 18. The printer is provided with an ink ribbon-sag formation mechanism 26 for forming sagging of the ink ribbon on the upstream side of the thermal head, then, when the ink ribbon reaches the ribbon-end state, printing to a transfer area on the recording medium is carried out through the use of sagging portions C+D of the ink ribbon formed by the ink ribbon-sag formation mechanism.
KOBAYASHI HIROSHI
OGIYAMA OSAMU
Takashi Ito
Yoshimi Hatanaka
Naoko Okura
Fumari Tamari
Takeyuki Suzuki
Shiro Isoda
Yohei Takahashi
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