JP2002070991A - Pulley for carriage power transmission and recording device equipped therewith - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a pulley for carriage power transmission capable of reducing noise and vibration by mitigating collision of a driven pulley 39 against the teeth 41 of a toothed endless belt 43, and elongating the service life of the toothed endless belt. SOLUTION: Both a driving pulley 37 and the driven pulley 39 for winding the toothed endless belt 43 for mounting a carriage 23 equipped with a printing head 21 have interlocking teeth 45, 47 engageable with the teeth 41 of the toothed endless belt 43 on the circumferential faces thereof.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a carriage drive transmission pulley for winding an endless belt for driving a carriage, and a recording apparatus having the pulley.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In an ink jet printer, which is one of recording apparatuses, printing is performed on paper by ejecting ink from a print head provided on a carriage while scanning the carriage in a main scanning direction. The carriage is mounted on a toothed endless belt wound between a drive pulley provided on the output shaft of the drive motor and a driven pulley provided on the frame, and as the drive motor reciprocates, the carriage is reciprocally driven. It reciprocates in the main scanning direction.

[0003] Conventionally, teeth are formed around a driving pulley in order to improve engagement with a toothed endless belt, but no teeth are formed around a driven pulley.

[0004]

Therefore, conventionally, as shown in FIG. 5, the teeth 105 of the toothed endless belt 103 collide with the smooth peripheral surface of the driven pulley 101 at the position indicated by the reference character A to generate noise. In addition, vibrations are caused to cause deterioration of print image quality. Further, the teeth of the toothed endless belt collide with the peripheral surface of the driven pulley, causing the teeth to be worn down or deformed.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to reduce the collision between the driven pulley and the teeth of the toothed endless belt to reduce noise and vibration and to extend the life of the toothed endless belt. And a recording device provided with the pulley.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, a carriage drive transmission pulley according to claim 1 of the present invention comprises two pulleys around which a toothed endless belt to which a carriage having a print head is attached is wound. Are characterized by having engaging teeth on their peripheral surfaces that can engage with the teeth of the toothed endless belt.

According to the present invention, the engagement teeth of the two pulleys mesh with the teeth of the toothed endless belt, so that the teeth alternately enter each other in a wedge shape, and the tips of the teeth are at the bottoms of the valleys of the other tooth. No collision. Therefore, noise and vibration are reduced, and deterioration of print quality (image quality) can be prevented.

[0008] A carriage drive transmission pulley according to a second aspect of the present invention is characterized in that, in the first aspect, the two pulleys are a drive pulley and a driven pulley. According to the present invention, the generation of vibration can be suppressed in both the driving pulley and the driven pulley,
Vibration is not transmitted to the toothed endless belt wound between the pulleys, and vibration of the carriage is suppressed.

The carriage drive transmission pulley according to a third aspect of the present invention is characterized in that, in the first or second aspect, the engagement teeth of the pulley are formed at a pitch of 1/20 inch or less. Things. According to the present invention,
Since the engaging teeth of the pulley are formed at a finer pitch than the conventional engaging teeth, the above effects can be realized more reliably.

[0010] Further, the recording apparatus according to claim 4 of the present application,
A carriage drive transmission pulley according to any one of claims 1 to 3 is provided.
ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, the noise and vibration can be provided, and the recording apparatus with little deterioration of print quality (image quality) can be provided.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a side view showing an ink jet printer which is an example of a recording apparatus to which the carriage drive transmission pulley of the present invention is applied. FIG. 2 is a front view showing the structure around the carriage. FIG. 3 is a front view showing a driving pulley, a driven pulley, and a toothed endless belt.
FIG. 4 is an enlarged view showing an engaged state between the driven pulley and the teeth of the toothed endless belt.

As shown in FIG. 1, the ink jet printer 1 includes a paper feed unit 3, a recording unit 5, and a paper discharge unit 7 from the upstream side in the paper feed direction. A paper feed tray 11 is provided in the paper feed unit 3, and a plurality of sheets S
Can be loaded. Immediately downstream of the paper feed tray 11, a paper feed roller 13 is provided. The paper feed roller 13 is provided between the paper feed tray 1 and the separation pad.
The sheet S located at the uppermost part of the sheet No. 1 is pressed and sent forward.

Paper S sent out by paper feed roller 13
Reaches a paper feed roller 19 composed of a lower paper feed drive roller 15 and an upper paper feed driven roller 17, where the paper feed roller 19 receives a precise paper feed operation in a printing process by a drive system (not shown). Paper is fed toward the print head 21 located downstream of the print head 19. The paper feed driven roller 17 has a drum shape whose diameter gradually increases toward the center, and is constantly urged to the paper feed drive roller 15 by a roller urging device 47. A driving force is applied to the sheet S.

The print head 21 is mounted on a carriage 23. The carriage 23 is supported by a carriage guide shaft 24 extending in a direction perpendicular to the plane of FIG. It can be moved back and forth. At a position facing the print head 21,
A platen 25 is provided. The top surface of the platen 25 supports the sheet S from below when printing is performed on the sheet S by the print head 21.

The distance between the print head 21 and the top surface of the platen 25 can be appropriately adjusted according to the thickness of the sheet S, so that the sheet S can smoothly pass over the top surface of the platen 25. And high quality printing. The paper S printed by the print head 21 is sequentially discharged out of the apparatus by a discharge roller 27 provided in the paper discharge unit 7.

The paper discharge roller 27 is composed of a lower paper discharge drive roller 29 and an upper paper discharge driven roller 31, and a mechanism for drawing out and discharging the paper S by the rotation of the paper discharge drive roller 29. It has become. In the drawing, reference numeral 33 denotes a main frame, and reference numeral 39 denotes a horizontal portion extending horizontally from the main frame 33. In the present embodiment, the horizontal portion 39 is provided with the roller urging device 47. I have.

As shown in FIG. 2, a drive motor 34 is mounted on a base frame (main frame 33) of the printer body, and a drive pulley 37 is mounted on an output shaft 35 of the drive motor 34.
Is provided. A driven pulley 39 is rotatably provided on the side opposite to the side on which the drive motor 34 is provided. Between the driving pulley 37 and the driven pulley 39, a toothed endless belt 43 having engagement teeth 41 formed inside is wound. The carriage 23 is connected to the toothed endless belt 43, and the toothed endless belt 43 circulates clockwise or counterclockwise to move the carriage 23 in the main scanning direction orthogonal to the sheet feeding direction. It can reciprocate.

As shown in FIG. 3, around the driving pulley 37, there are formed engaging teeth 45 which can be engaged with the teeth 41 of the toothed endless belt 43, and the engaging teeth 45 and the toothed endless belt 43 are formed. The driving force of the driving motor 33 is reliably transmitted to the driving pulley 37 by the engagement with the teeth 41 of the driving motor.

Further, as shown in FIG. 3, engagement teeth 47 are formed around the driven pulley 39 so as to be able to engage with the teeth 41 of the endless belt 43 with teeth. By the way, the conventional driven pulley had no teeth formed around it, so the teeth of the toothed endless belt collided with the smooth peripheral surface of the driven pulley, generating noise, or generating vibration and printing quality (image quality). ). Furthermore, the teeth of the toothed endless belt collide with the peripheral surface of the driven pulley, causing the belt teeth to wear down or be deformed.

In the present invention, since the engaging teeth 47 are also formed on the driven pulley 39 side, the teeth 41 of the toothed endless belt 43 and the engaging teeth 47 of the driven pulley 39 alternately enter in a wedge shape. As shown in FIG.
Does not collide with the valley portions 50 of the teeth 41 of the toothed endless belt 43. Therefore, noise and vibration are reduced, and deterioration of print image quality can be prevented. Further, since the tips 48 of the engaging teeth 47 do not collide with the valleys 50 of the teeth 41 of the toothed endless belt 43, the rate at which the teeth 41 of the belt are worn down or deformed is significantly smaller than in the conventional case. Become.

As described above, according to the carriage drive transmitting pulley according to the present embodiment, the two pulleys 37, 3
By engaging the engaging teeth 45, 49 of 9 with the teeth of the toothed endless belt, the teeth alternately enter each other in a wedge shape, and the tips of the teeth do not collide with the bottom of the valley of the other tooth.
Therefore, noise and vibration are reduced, and deterioration of print quality (image quality) can be prevented.

The engaging teeth 4 of the driven pulley 39 of this embodiment
9 is formed at a 1/20 inch pitch. At such a pitch and at a finer pitch, the engaging teeth 4
It has been confirmed that the formation of No. 7 makes the above effect more reliable.

[0023]

According to the present invention, when the engaging teeth of the two pulleys mesh with the teeth of the toothed endless belt, the teeth alternately enter each other in a wedge shape, and the tips of the teeth are formed in the valleys of the other tooth. No collision. Therefore, noise and vibration are reduced, and deterioration of print image quality can be prevented.

In addition, since the generation of vibration can be suppressed in both the driving pulley and the driven pulley, the vibration is not transmitted to the toothed endless belt wound between the pulleys, and the carriage vibrates. Is suppressed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a side view showing an ink jet printer as an example of a recording apparatus to which a carriage drive transmission pulley of the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is a front view showing a structure around a carriage.

FIG. 3 is a front view showing a driving pulley, a driven pulley, and a toothed endless belt.

FIG. 4 is an enlarged view showing an engaged state of a driven pulley and teeth of an endless belt with teeth.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing a problem in a conventional driven pulley.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Ink-jet printer 3 Printer main body 5 Paper feed part 11 Paper feed tray 13 Paper feed roller 15 Paper feed drive roller 17 Paper feed driven roller 19 Paper feed roller 21 Print head 23 Carriage 34 Drive motor 35 Output shaft 37 Drive pulley 39 Drive pulley 41 Teeth of toothed endless belt 43 Endless toothed belt 45 Engagement tooth 49 Engagement tooth 48 Tip of engagement tooth 50 Tooth valley of toothed endless belt P paper

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. The method according to claim 1, wherein the two pulleys around which the toothed endless belt on which the carriage having the print head is mounted are wound with engaging teeth on the peripheral surface thereof for engaging the teeth of the toothed endless belt. Characteristic pulley for carriage drive transmission. 2. The carriage drive transmission pulley according to claim 1, wherein the two pulleys are a drive pulley and a driven pulley. 3. The carriage drive transmission pulley according to claim 1, wherein the engagement teeth of the pulley are formed at a pitch of 1/20 inch or less. 4. A recording apparatus comprising the carriage drive transmission pulley according to claim 1.