Printing faster with Thermal Printer

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silverGold
 
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Joined: Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:38 pm

Printing faster with Thermal Printer

Post by silverGold »

So I am working with the Thermal Printer as a bit of electronics beginner am a bit at a loss as what to do about the following issue, I want to print as fast possible but printing bitmaps is painfully slow with an arduino at the moment. The time between sending a raw bit map image and it actually showing up above the slit 1-2 seconds later, I really want speeds of at least .1 seconds (ideally .05). Should I stick with Arduino and try and modify the library to use ABS (which is available according to documentation) or should I try and go a more direct route and just buy and appropriate AVR as some electronics artist's I was talking to said Arduino's might be kind of slow at firing instructions anyway? If going for another chip, any recommendations as to what I should use to get the speeds I want?

I started poking around the adafruit thermal library already, I noticed, as others on this forum have done before me that the buffer overflow work around with delays is a bit of kludge working with time outs rather than turning on and using ABS as I mentioned above (No offence to Adafruit, its awesome to have any kind of library as a starting point). I have already played around with heating time and heating dots and increasing volt/amps, but changing those does not really speed up things that much. I am trying to rewrite bits of the library to turn on and use ABS, but its a slow process of trail and error at the moment.

I am using an Arduino Duemelanove at the moment, also have a mega and a leonardo lying around.

I would be grateful for any pointers or tips!
- SilverGold

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