【Oki Electric】 Oki Electro Printer

In 1972, Oki Electro Printer, based on a completely new principle, was released. It had the following features:

1) Extremely high speed of 8000 line/min.
2) No need to use special paper.
3) Low printing noise
4) Kanji (Chinese characters) and graphics could be printed.
5) Fewer mechanical moving parts.

In terms of its principle of operation, Oki Electro Printer printed on paper by depositing an ion stream controlled by an electric field onto an ink mist. The printer used corona discharge produced by applying a voltage of a few thousand volts to an extremely fine conductor, thereby ionizing molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen in the air around the conductor. On the other hand, ink was agitated using ultrasound, creating a mist of 5-20μ ink drops, and these drifted through the air. These were then sent out by air pressure between the platen and corona source at almost the same speed and in the same direction as paper feed. The ions moved into this ink mist, attaching themselves to the mist particles, moving in the direction created by the electrostatic force and mist stream, and attaching to paper placed in the interval with the platen, thereby achieving printing.

Specifications
  Oki Electro Printer
Printing system Printing using electric field control of ion stream
Character format Could print all characters and diagrams using the dot format
Printing speed Alphanumeric/kana approx. 8,000line/min
Kanji (Chinese characters) approx. 4,000line/min
Diagrams approx. 128,000dotline/min
Character composition Alphanumeric/kana 7×9 dot matrix
Kanji (Chinese characters) 16×18 dot matrix
Character size Alphanumeric/kana Vertical2.7mm Horizontal1.8mm
Kanji (Chinese characters) Vertical4.8mm Horizontal4.0mm
Number of characters Alphanumeric/kana 128types
Kanji (Chinese characters) Depends on size of pattern generator
Characters per line Alphanumeric/kana 136char/line
Kanji (Chinese characters) 68char/line
Number of dots per line 1360dot
Dot spacing Horizontal 100dot/inch
Vertical 96dot/inch
Paper Max. 15inch wide,folding ordinary paper with sprocket holes
Ink color Blue-purple

 
Oki Electro PrinterOki Electro Printer, Principle of Operation