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This is a late 90’s business timeclock, used for maintaining records of staff working times, by printing the time when used on a sheet of card.
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Here is the top cover removed, which is normally locked in place to stop tampering. The unit is programmed with the 3 buttons & the row of DIP switches along the top edge.
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Closeup of the settings panel, with all the various DIP switch options.
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Cover plate removed from the top, showing the LCD & CPU board, the backup battery normally fits behind this. The CPU is a 4-bit microcontroller from NEC, with built in LCD driver.
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Power Supply & prinhead drivers. This board is fitted with several NPN Darlington transistor arrays for driving the dox matrix printhead.
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Printhead assembly itself. The print ribbon fits over the top of the head & over the pins at the bottom. The drive hammers & solenoids are housed in the circular top of the unit.
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Bottom of the print head showing the row of impact pins used to create the printout.
Bottom of the solenoid assembly with the ribbon cable for power. There are 9 solenoids, to operate the 9 pins in the head.
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Top layer of the printhead assembly, showing the leaf spring used to hold the hammers in the correct positions.
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Hammer assembly. The fingers on the ends of the arms push on the pins to strike through the ribbon onto the card.
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The ring of solenoids at the centre of the assembly. These are driven with 3A darlington power arrays on the PSU board.
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There is only a single drive motor in the entire unit, that both clamps the card for printing & moves the printhead laterally across the card. Through a rack & pinion this also advances the ribbon with each print.