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Ink ribbon
An ink ribbon or inked ribbon is an expendable assembly serving the function of transferring pigment to paper in various devices for impact printing. Since such assemblies were first widely used on typewriters, they were often called typewriter ribbons, but ink ribbons were already in use with other printing and marking devices. Ink ribbons are part of standard designs for hand- or motor-driven typewriters, teleprinters, stenotype machines, computer-driven printers, and many mechanical calculators. Thousands of varieties of ink ribbons and ribbon cartridges have been produced, and are available from stationery suppliers.
The prototypical assembly consists of a length of a medium, either pigment-impregnated woven ribbon or pigment-coated polymer tape, and a transport mechanism involving two axles. At any given moment, most of the length of the medium is wound as a close-spaced spiral around one axle or the other, tight enough for friction among turns to make it behave mostly like a solid cylinder. Rotation of the axles moves the ribbon or tape after each impact and usually aids in maintaining tension along the roughly straight-line path of the medium between the axles. The assembly may itself include mechanisms that control the tension in the temporarily unwound portion of the medium, or the typewriter/printer ribbon-advance mechanism may control the tension.
Some typewriter ribbons have two different colored pigments (usually black and red) running in parallel along the length of the ribbon. These ribbons are used with typewriters which have a selection lever ("bichrome ribbon switch") to slightly raise or lower the ribbon, so the typebars will print either color, as desired.
Woven fabric typewriter ribbons were the first kind to be developed. With them, the pigment is an ink that dries on typing paper but not on the ribbon, and the ribbon is mounted at each end to a flanged reel whose hub engages with one of the axles. Only the axle onto which the ribbon is winding is driven, and the ribbon assembly is intended to work with an axle-driving mechanism that reverses the direction of rotation when the undriven axle reaches the point where there is almost no ribbon left wound around it.
Thus, the full length of the ribbon shuttles back and forth between reels, and each position along it is struck twice in each cycle of the ribbon's motion (once in the right-to-left phase and once in the left-to-right). This process can proceed indefinitely, until a depleting ink supply causes the typed characters to become unacceptably faint. Reversal of the ribbon was often controlled manually in early machines, but automatic reversal mechanisms became popular later.
An operator who judges a ribbon's ink supply to be too depleted typically manually winds the whole ribbon onto the fuller reel, releasing it from the empty one, and discarding the ribbon and the reel on which it is wound. It is replaced with a new ribbon that is purchased already wound on a single compatible reel. The attachment between reel and ribbon typically involves one grommet at each end of the ribbon that pierces the ribbon and engages with a hook on the hub of the corresponding reel. There often is a small grommet or eyelet near each end of the ribbon, which activates an automatic ribbon-reversal feature of the ribbon-advance mechanism.
An alternative design encloses two pre-threaded spools within a single disposable ribbon cartridge, eliminating the need to manually thread a messy ink ribbon. Cartridge designs are often used with higher-speed automatic printers, or ribbons with multiple inks used for color printing. Heavy-duty high-speed line printers may use wider ink ribbons, ranging up to the full width of a 132-column printout, nominally 14 inches (360 mm).
Another alternative design omits the spools, and simply stuffs inked ribbon into a plastic box through a narrow vertical slot, pulling it out the other end as needed. The box and ribbon are proportioned to avoid tangling inside the box. The ends of the ribbon are joined in an endless loop, so that a ribbon reversing mechanism is not needed. Some of these spool-less cartridge designs make a half-twist in the ribbon before joining it up into a loop, resulting in a Möbius strip. This is done to distribute wear and ink depletion more evenly throughout the ribbon, making it last longer.
Hub AI
Ink ribbon AI simulator
(@Ink ribbon_simulator)
Ink ribbon
An ink ribbon or inked ribbon is an expendable assembly serving the function of transferring pigment to paper in various devices for impact printing. Since such assemblies were first widely used on typewriters, they were often called typewriter ribbons, but ink ribbons were already in use with other printing and marking devices. Ink ribbons are part of standard designs for hand- or motor-driven typewriters, teleprinters, stenotype machines, computer-driven printers, and many mechanical calculators. Thousands of varieties of ink ribbons and ribbon cartridges have been produced, and are available from stationery suppliers.
The prototypical assembly consists of a length of a medium, either pigment-impregnated woven ribbon or pigment-coated polymer tape, and a transport mechanism involving two axles. At any given moment, most of the length of the medium is wound as a close-spaced spiral around one axle or the other, tight enough for friction among turns to make it behave mostly like a solid cylinder. Rotation of the axles moves the ribbon or tape after each impact and usually aids in maintaining tension along the roughly straight-line path of the medium between the axles. The assembly may itself include mechanisms that control the tension in the temporarily unwound portion of the medium, or the typewriter/printer ribbon-advance mechanism may control the tension.
Some typewriter ribbons have two different colored pigments (usually black and red) running in parallel along the length of the ribbon. These ribbons are used with typewriters which have a selection lever ("bichrome ribbon switch") to slightly raise or lower the ribbon, so the typebars will print either color, as desired.
Woven fabric typewriter ribbons were the first kind to be developed. With them, the pigment is an ink that dries on typing paper but not on the ribbon, and the ribbon is mounted at each end to a flanged reel whose hub engages with one of the axles. Only the axle onto which the ribbon is winding is driven, and the ribbon assembly is intended to work with an axle-driving mechanism that reverses the direction of rotation when the undriven axle reaches the point where there is almost no ribbon left wound around it.
Thus, the full length of the ribbon shuttles back and forth between reels, and each position along it is struck twice in each cycle of the ribbon's motion (once in the right-to-left phase and once in the left-to-right). This process can proceed indefinitely, until a depleting ink supply causes the typed characters to become unacceptably faint. Reversal of the ribbon was often controlled manually in early machines, but automatic reversal mechanisms became popular later.
An operator who judges a ribbon's ink supply to be too depleted typically manually winds the whole ribbon onto the fuller reel, releasing it from the empty one, and discarding the ribbon and the reel on which it is wound. It is replaced with a new ribbon that is purchased already wound on a single compatible reel. The attachment between reel and ribbon typically involves one grommet at each end of the ribbon that pierces the ribbon and engages with a hook on the hub of the corresponding reel. There often is a small grommet or eyelet near each end of the ribbon, which activates an automatic ribbon-reversal feature of the ribbon-advance mechanism.
An alternative design encloses two pre-threaded spools within a single disposable ribbon cartridge, eliminating the need to manually thread a messy ink ribbon. Cartridge designs are often used with higher-speed automatic printers, or ribbons with multiple inks used for color printing. Heavy-duty high-speed line printers may use wider ink ribbons, ranging up to the full width of a 132-column printout, nominally 14 inches (360 mm).
Another alternative design omits the spools, and simply stuffs inked ribbon into a plastic box through a narrow vertical slot, pulling it out the other end as needed. The box and ribbon are proportioned to avoid tangling inside the box. The ends of the ribbon are joined in an endless loop, so that a ribbon reversing mechanism is not needed. Some of these spool-less cartridge designs make a half-twist in the ribbon before joining it up into a loop, resulting in a Möbius strip. This is done to distribute wear and ink depletion more evenly throughout the ribbon, making it last longer.