Patent ID: 7400337

Claim:
A method for operating a thermal printer with a print head adapted to print images by transferring donor material from patches of donor material from a donor ribbon onto a receiver medium, said printer being operable to print images in a manner that exhausts a fill donor patch set or a fractional donor patch set during printing, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a first print order; determining whether a fractional donor patch set is available for printing; and printing an image using donor material from the fractional donor patch set where at least part of the first print order can be satisfied using donor material from the fractional donor patch set; wherein data is stored in an electronic memory inside of the thermal printer and apart from the donor ribbon indicating whether a fractional donor patch set is available for printing, wherein the step of determining whether a fractional donor patch set is available for printing is performed based upon the stored data, and wherein at the completion of the first print order the donor ribbon is moved to a position aligning a fractional donor patch set with the print head in the event that at least part of a second print order can be satisfied using donor material from the fractional donor patch set.