Claims
- 1. A consumable supply item for a piece of data bearing document production equipment comprising a take-up cylinder, a ribbon material wound onto the cylinder, and a memory element attached to the cylinder.
- 2. The consumable supply item of claim 1, wherein the take-up cylinder is configured for use in a printer.
- 3. The consumable supply item of claim 1, wherein the ribbon material is a multi-color print ribbon.
- 4. The consumable supply item of claim 1, wherein the memory element is a read/write memory element.
- 5. A consumable supply item for a piece of data bearing document production equipment comprising a core, a ribbon material wound onto the core, and a memory element attached to the core
- 6. A printer comprising a ribbon take-up cylinder disposed on a spindle, a read/write memory element fixed to the cylinder, and a read/write unit for reading data from and writing data to the read/write memory element.
- 7. The printer of claim 6, wherein the printer is a thermal printer.
- 8. The printer of claim 6, wherein the read/write unit is a radio frequency read/write unit.
- 9. The printer of claim 6, wherein the read/write unit is positioned adjacent the take-up cylinder.
- 10. A method of operating a piece of data bearing document production equipment, comprising:
loading a consumable supply item into the piece of equipment, the supply item including a supply cylinder and a take-up cylinder, at least one of said supply cylinder and said take-up cylinder containing a memory element having stored data; using the piece of equipment to read data from the memory element; determining whether the loaded consumable supply item is a recognized supply item based upon the data that is read from the memory element; and initiating an activity in the piece of equipment that is different from a normal operating activity of the piece of equipment when the loaded consumable supply item is a recognized supply item.
- 11. The method of claim 10, wherein the memory element is connected to the take-up cylinder.
PRIORITY DATA
[0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/342,781 filed Dec. 21, 2001, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/400,331 filed Jul. 31, 2002.
Provisional Applications (2)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
|
60342781 |
Dec 2001 |
US |
|
60400331 |
Jul 2002 |
US |