Patent ID: 7277109

Claim:
A thermal transfer printer comprising: at least one ink ribbon drive mechanism for rotationally driving a feed roll and a take-up roll around which a long ink ribbon on which an ink component and a transparent coating component are sequentially formed in its longitudinal direction; a thermal head for thermally transferring at least one ink component and a coating component on a recording paper and forming an image on the recording paper by heating the ink ribbon; and a control means for controlling each part; wherein a mark pattern for aligning the ink ribbon with respect to the thermal head is formed in each gap between the coating component and an ink component of the ink ribbon; an optical sensor for reading the mark pattern is provided in the vicinity of the thermal head; before the thermal head thermally transfers the ink component on the recording paper, the control means makes the mark pattern record predetermined information by sublimating a part of the mark pattern adjacent to a region of the ink component onto the recording paper; and when the optical sensor reads the predetermined information from the mark pattern, the control means detects a front end of an unused region of the ink ribbon based on the predetermined information.