Label printing apparatus which print on label material such as discrete or die cut labels or on a continuous supply of tape are known. The known label printing apparatus is arranged to receive various different widths of label material.
Label printing apparatuses which use label material in the form of rolls are known. These rolls are of varying width and diameter. The label material is wound on a core. The rolls of label material are manually loaded onto a spool and placed in the printer. The labels are manually fed into the print location. Thus loading and unloading of the label material into and out of the label printing apparatus requires the user to manually interact with the label printing apparatus and perform several steps manually to ensure that the label material is correctly oriented in the label printing apparatus.
Label printing apparatuses where a supply of label material is provided on a disposable roll holder are also known. The roll holder, with the supply of label material is manually guided to a specific location in the label printing apparatus to ensure that the label material is properly positioned. The label material is manually fed into or placed through the printing region.
There have been proposed various mechanism for identifying the type of label material in the label printing apparatus ranging from manually inputting this information to various automatic detection schemes.
The label material could be included in a cassette. However, the inventors have realized that this is not straight forward. Effective positioning and retaining of the cassette in the correct position is a problem.
Further, in a scenario where the label material is printed outside the cassette, the label material should not be compromised when the cassette is handled by the user. It is desirable therefore that the label media should be in the cassette when the cassette is handled by the user. When the cassette is loaded, the label media should be automatically fed into the printer. When the cassette is removed, the label media may be automatically backed into the cassette prior to the removal of the cassette. If a feed roller is provided in addition to a platen and print head, there may be issues of synchronization of the driven feed roller and the driven platen.
Another problem is caused if a cassette is prematurely removed from the label printing apparatus.
It is an aim of some embodiments of the invention to address one or more of the problems mentioned previously.