Patent Document ID: 5519426
Application ID: 08146506
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An improved method for controlling a thermal printer that generates binary images on a print media by selectively heating or not heating a plurality of individual resistive heating elements arranged in a print line, each heating element being operable in response to a corresponding drive energy generated by a driver circuit that is operably coupled to a pixel representation of the image, the thermal printer having a native resolution across the print line that corresponds to a center-to-center distance between adjacent heating elements and having a native pixel drive energy that is applied to a heating element in order to produce a binary pixel image having a native area corresponding to the native resolution of the thermal printer, the improved method comprising the step of: (a) providing each of one or more selected heating elements with an over-drive energy that is higher than the native pixel drive energy, but lower than a maximum drive energy for the thermal printer above which a thermal transfer of the binary pixel image will not consistently produce a uniform quality printed image, such that the binary pixel image on the print media corresponding to each of the selected heating elements is increased in area beyond the native area of the thermal printer thereby enabling the thermal printer to realize an increase in an effective resolution of the binary image.