Patent 7328980 was granted and assigned to ZINK Imaging on February, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method estimates the temperature of a thermal print head element during printing. In one embodiment, the temperature is estimated using the resistance of the thermal print head element, which typically changes with the print head element temperature. The change in resistance of the print head element is exploited to indirectly estimate the temperature of the print head element.