JP4490390B2 - Lens cleaner - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a lens cleaner for cleaning a lens of an optical pickup.

As this type of lens cleaner, a cleaning member disclosed in JP-A-8-212576 is known. The cleaning member is configured to include a disk body having substantially the same shape as the information recording medium (LD), and the lead-in track and the play track on the disk body are brought into contact with the lens of the optical head unit in the disk device. There are four first brush bodies and four second brush bodies for removing dirt adhering to the lens (hereinafter also referred to as “brush bodies” when the first brush body and the second brush body are not distinguished). Each is planted. Further, in this cleaning member, in order to improve the cleaning efficiency, it is possible to mount a liquid supply body for supplying (applying) a liquid (cleaning liquid) to the lens instead of any of the brush bodies. It has become.
JP-A-8-212576 (page 2-3, Fig. 1-4)

  However, the above cleaning member has the following problems. That is, in this cleaning member, since the brush body and the liquid supply body are configured separately and are disposed at positions separated from each other, the liquid does not come into contact with the lens to which the liquid has been supplied. The lens may remain as it is, and the lens may become dirty due to dust adhering to the remaining liquid. For this reason, in order to solve this problem, a liquid retaining part having liquid retaining properties is disposed at the base end of the brush body, and the liquid soaked in the liquid retaining part is supplied to the brush body to provide the brush body. A lens cleaner that improves the cleaning efficiency and prevents the liquid from remaining on the lens has been developed by contacting the lens in a wet state.

  However, there is a problem with the lens cleaner provided with the liquid retaining portion as described above. Specifically, since it is difficult to form a recess or the like for disposing the liquid retaining portion on the plate having a thickness of about 1.2 mm, in this type of lens cleaner, a method of disposing the liquid retaining portion As a general method, for example, a cloth-like liquid retaining part is attached to one surface of the board located on the base end side of the brush body. In this case, in the lens cleaner that employs this method, the portion to which the liquid retaining portion is attached is slightly thicker than the other portions. For this reason, for example, when the lens cleaner is mounted (loaded) on a front loading type (slot-in type) disk device, the liquid retaining portion is pressed by the drawing roller of the disk device, and the liquid is discharged from the liquid retaining portion. There is a risk of flowing into the disk unit. Therefore, this type of lens cleaner has a problem that the disk device may be damaged by the liquid flowing into the disk device.

  The present invention has been made in view of such problems, and a main object of the present invention is to provide a lens cleaner that can reliably remove dirt from a lens while preventing liquid from flowing out.

In order to achieve the above object, the lens cleaner according to the present invention is arranged on the disc body so that the disc body is inserted into the disc body and an insertion hole formed in the disc body, and the tip end side protrudes from one surface of the disc body. Yes a cleaning unit which is set, the liquid retention with as the cleaning unit is in contact with the inserted through said insertion hole and covering Ikatsu base end portion of the cleaning unit is arranged on the other surface of the disk body And a liquid holding part that supplies the liquid holding liquid from the base end part toward the tip part of the cleaning part , and is configured to be able to clean the lens of the optical pickup. On the surface, a guard part formed to have a thickness equal to or larger than the thickness of the liquid retaining part is disposed so as to surround the liquid retaining part without covering the upper surface of the liquid retaining part.

  In this case, it is possible to employ a configuration in which a plurality of the cleaning units are provided and the cleaning units are arranged at positions where the distances from the center of the disc main body are different from each other.

  Moreover, the structure provided with the said some liquid retention part which each covers the some penetration hole by which the said cleaning part was penetrated is employable.

  According to the lens cleaner according to the present invention, the guard portion formed to have a thickness equal to or greater than the thickness of the liquid retaining portion is disposed on the other surface of the disc body so as to surround the liquid retaining portion. When the lens cleaner is inserted into the disk device, it is possible to reliably avoid contact between the drawing roller and the liquid retaining portion of the disk device. For this reason, it is possible to reliably prevent the liquid from flowing out from the liquid holding part into the disk device due to the liquid holding part being pressed by the drawing roller. In addition, the liquid retaining part for supplying the liquid to the cleaning part is disposed on the other surface of the disc body, so that the effect of softening and dissolving the dirt by the liquid supplied to the cleaning part and the scratching of the dirt by the contact of the cleaning part are obtained. As a result of the simultaneous action of the removal effect, even if dirt is adhered to the lens of the optical pickup in the disk device, the adhered dirt can be reliably removed. Therefore, according to this lens cleaner, it is possible to surely remove the dirt of the lens of the optical pickup in the disk device while reliably preventing the failure of the disk device due to the liquid flowing out.

  Further, according to the lens cleaner according to the present invention, the frequency of contact of the cleaning unit with the lens of the moving optical pickup is provided by disposing a plurality of cleaning units at different positions from the center of the disc body. Therefore, the cleaning efficiency can be sufficiently improved.

  In addition, according to the lens cleaner according to the present invention, it is possible to supply liquid to a plurality of cleaning units by providing a plurality of liquid holding units respectively covering a plurality of insertion holes through which the cleaning unit is inserted. The cleaning efficiency can be further improved.

  Hereinafter, the best mode of a lens cleaner according to the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

  First, the configuration of the lens cleaner 1 will be described with reference to the drawings.

  A lens cleaner 1 shown in FIG. 1 is an example of a lens cleaner according to the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1 and FIGS. 2 and 3, a disk main body 2, five cleaning parts 3, two liquid retaining parts 4, And two guard portions 5 are provided. The disc main body 2 is almost the same size as a disc-shaped information recording medium (for example, a CD or a DVD) mounted on a disc device 100 (see FIG. 6) provided with an optical pickup 101 (see FIG. 8) to be cleaned. And it is formed in the disk shape which has the center hole 2a of the substantially same thickness.

  In addition, an annular area 21a (see FIG. 2) at the center of one surface of the disc main body 2 (hereinafter, this surface is also referred to as “recording surface 21”) is used to cause the disc device 100 to recognize the lens cleaner 1. TOC (Table Of Contents) information is recorded. In this case, the position of the annular area 21a is defined to be the same as or substantially the same as the lead-in area (an area where index data or the like is recorded) on the information recording medium. Also, on the other surface of the disc body 2 (hereinafter, this surface is also referred to as “label surface 22”), as shown in FIG. Has been.

  As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the disk main body 2 is formed with five insertion holes 23 having a diameter of about 0.6 mm into which the base end 32 (see FIG. 4) side of the cleaning unit 3 can be inserted. ing. In this case, the formation position of each insertion hole 23 is defined such that each opening is located in the annular area 21a of the recording surface 21 and the distance from the center of the disc body 2 to each opening is different from each other. ing.

As shown in FIG. 4, the cleaning unit 3 is formed in a brush shape having a length of about 3 mm and a diameter of about 0.5 mm by bundling a plurality of thin nylon wires. State Each cleaning unit 3, together with the base end portion 32 side of the insertion holes 23 of the disk body 2 is inserted, distal end 31 (one end portion) side is protruded by about 1mm from the recording surface 21 of the disk body 2 That is, the base end 32 side is fixed to the disc main body 2 with an adhesive or the like in a state of extending slightly from the recording surface 21.

  As shown in FIG. 5, the liquid retaining part 4 is formed in a disc shape having a diameter of 10 mm and a thickness of about 0.5 mm, using a cloth or nonwoven fabric having liquid retaining properties and water absorption. Further, as shown in FIG. 1, each liquid retaining portion 4 has a sticking surface 41 (see FIG. 4) so as to cover the formation site of the two insertion holes 23 of each insertion hole 23 in the disc body 2. Is affixed (arranged) to the disc body 2 with an adhesive or the like in a state of being in close contact with the label surface 22. In this case, as shown in the figure, the affixing surface 41 of the liquid retaining part 4 and the proximal end part 32 of the cleaning part 3 are in contact with each other in the state of being affixed to the disc main body 2. For this reason, when the cleaning liquid 201 (the liquid in the present invention: see FIG. 3) is soaked into (maintained in) the liquid retaining section 4, the cleaning liquid 201 retained by the liquid retaining section 4 is removed from the cleaning section 3. To be supplied.

  As shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, the guard portion 5 is formed with a central hole 51 having a diameter slightly larger than the diameter of the liquid retaining portion 4 (for example, about 10.2 mm) at the center portion, and at the center portion side. The thickness of the ring part 52 is equal to or greater than the thickness of the liquid retaining part 4 (for example, about 1 mm), and the thickness of the ring part 53 on the outer peripheral part side is approximately the same as the thickness of the liquid retaining part 4 (for example, about 0.1 mm). It is formed in an annular shape with a step of about 5 mm). The guard portion 5 is attached (arranged) to the label surface 22 of the disc body 2 with an adhesive or the like so as to surround the liquid retaining portion 4. In this case, when the lens cleaner 1 is mounted on the front loading type disk device 100, the guard unit 5 is pulled by the lens cleaner 1 with the drawing rollers 103a, 103b, and 103c of the disk device 100 (see FIG. 6; hereinafter, no distinction is made). It sometimes has a function of guarding the pressure from the drawing roller 103 against the liquid retaining portion 4 when drawn by the “drawing roller 103”.

  Next, a method of cleaning the lens 102 (see FIG. 8) of the optical pickup 101 in the front loading type disk apparatus 100 using the lens cleaner 1 will be described with reference to the drawings.

  First, as shown in FIG. 3, the cleaning liquid 201 in the bottle 200 is dropped onto the liquid retaining portion 4 with the recording surface 21 of the disk main body 2 facing downward. At this time, the dropped cleaning liquid 201 is held by the liquid holding unit 4. In addition, the cleaning liquid 201 retained by the liquid retaining unit 4 is gradually supplied from the base end portion 32 of the cleaning unit 3 in contact with the liquid retaining unit 4 toward the distal end portion 31. Next, as shown in FIG. 6, the lens cleaner 1 is inserted into the insertion slot of the disc device 100 with the recording surface 21 of the disc body 2 facing downward. At this time, the drawing roller 103 of the disk device 100 abuts the recording surface 21 and the label surface 22 of the disk main body 2 in the lens cleaner 1 and sandwiches the disk main body 2 from both sides 21 and 22, while the inner side of the disk device 100. Pull in.

  In this case, as shown in FIG. 7, since the guard part 5 having a thickness larger than the thickness of the liquid retaining part 4 is disposed so as to surround the liquid retaining part 4, the drawing roller 103c and the liquid retaining part Contact with 4 is avoided. That is, the guard unit 5 guards the pressure from the drawing roller 103 c against the liquid retaining unit 4. For this reason, the situation in which the cleaning liquid 201 flows out of the disk apparatus 100 from the liquid holding section 4 due to the liquid holding section 4 being pressed by the pulling roller 103c is surely prevented.

  Subsequently, a reproduction operation is performed on the disk device 100. In response to this, the disk device 100 starts reading the TOC information recorded on the lens cleaner 1 via the optical pickup 101. Next, based on the read TOC information, the disk device 100 determines that the set lens cleaner 1 is, for example, a CD (or a disk having the same configuration as the CD), and drives to read the index data. The rotation of the lens cleaner 1 by the motor and the focusing by the optical pickup 101 are started.

  At this time, the optical pickup 101 emits the detection light and receives the reflected light of the detection light, and as shown in FIG. 8, in the region facing the annular area 21a of the lens cleaner 1, the lens cleaner 1 While reciprocating along the radial direction of the (disk main body 2), focusing is performed by reciprocating up and down. At this time, the tip of the cleaning unit 3 comes into contact with the lens 102 of the optical pickup 101 by the rotation of the lens cleaner 1. In this case, the cleaning liquid 201 is supplied from the liquid retaining section 4 to the distal end portion 31 of the cleaning section 3 in which the liquid retaining section 4 is disposed on the base end portion 32 side. For this reason, as a result of the effect of the softening and dissolution of the dirt by the cleaning liquid 201 and the effect of scraping off the dirt by the contact of the cleaning unit 3 acting simultaneously, even if the dirt is fixed to the lens 102, it is fixed. Dirt that is present is reliably removed. In addition, since a plurality of (in this example, five) cleaning units 3 are arranged at different distances from the center of the disc main body 2, the cleaning unit 3 is higher than the moving optical pickup 101. Since the contact occurs frequently, the cleaning efficiency is sufficiently improved.

  When the cleaning is finished after the above operation is continued for a predetermined time, the disk device 100 is stopped. In response to this, the disk device 100 controls the optical pickup 101 to move the optical pickup 101 to the initial position, and then stops the operation. Further, the disk device 100 stops the rotation of the lens cleaner 1 by the drive motor. As a result, the rotation of the lens cleaner 1 is stopped, the cleaning of the lens 102 is completed, and the lens cleaner 1 can be taken out from the disk device 100.

  As described above, the guard portion 5 formed to have a thickness equal to or greater than the thickness of the liquid retaining portion 4 is disposed on the label surface 22 of the disc body 2 so as to surround the liquid retaining portion 4, so that a front loading type disk device is provided. When the lens cleaner 1 is inserted into 100, the contact between the drawing roller 103 of the disk device 100 and the liquid retaining portion 4 can be reliably avoided. Therefore, it is possible to reliably prevent the cleaning liquid 201 from flowing into the disk device 100 from the liquid retaining part 4 due to the liquid retaining part 4 being pressed by the drawing roller 103.

  Further, according to the lens cleaner 1, the liquid retaining part 4 that supplies the cleaning liquid 201 to the cleaning part 3 is disposed on the label surface 22 of the disc body 2, so that the cleaning liquid 201 supplied to the cleaning part 3 As a result of the effect of the softening and dissolution of dirt and the effect of scraping off dirt due to contact with the cleaning unit 3 acting at the same time, even if dirt is stuck to the lens 102 of the optical pickup 101 in the disk device 100, the dirt is stuck. It is possible to reliably remove the dirt. Therefore, according to the lens cleaner 1, the contamination of the lens 102 of the optical pickup 101 in the disk device 100 can be reliably removed while reliably preventing the failure of the disk device 100 due to the flow of the cleaning liquid 201. .

  Further, according to this lens cleaner 1, the frequency of contact of the cleaning unit 3 with the moving optical pickup 101 by arranging the plurality of cleaning units 3 at positions where the distances from the center of the disc main body 2 are different from each other. Therefore, the cleaning efficiency can be sufficiently improved.

  Further, according to the lens cleaner 1, the two cleaning parts 3 are provided by including the two liquid retaining parts 4 respectively covering two (plurality) of the plurality of insertion holes 23 through which the cleaning part 3 is inserted. Since the cleaning liquid 201 can be supplied to the cleaning device, the cleaning efficiency can be further improved.

  In addition, this invention is not limited to said structure. For example, although an example in which five cleaning units 3 are provided has been described above, the number of cleaning units 3 is not limited to this and can be defined as an arbitrary number. Further, the guard portion 5 is not limited to the above-described shape, and for example, as shown in FIG. 9, a tapered surface is formed on the outer edge portion to form a pentagonal guard portion 5A, or as shown in FIG. In addition, the entire outer edge portion is formed with a tapered surface, and the shape of the guard portion can be arbitrarily formed like a guard portion 5B having a triangular cross section. Further, the shape in plan view is not limited to an annular shape, and can be formed in an arbitrary shape such as an elliptical shape or a polygonal shape.

  Further, the example in which the two liquid retaining portions 4 are disposed so as to cover the two insertion holes 23 is described above, but one liquid retaining portion 4 is disposed so as to cover the one insertion hole 23. It is also possible to adopt a configuration in which three liquid retaining portions 4 are disposed so as to cover three or more insertion holes 23. Further, instead of a configuration in which one insertion hole 23 is individually covered with one liquid retaining portion 4, a plurality of (for example, two) insertion holes 23 are formed in, for example, an arc shape like a lens cleaner 1A shown in FIG. It is also possible to adopt a configuration in which the arc-shaped guard portion 5C is disposed so as to be covered with the single liquid retaining portion 4A and to surround the liquid retaining portion 4A. Moreover, although it described above about the example which formed the liquid retention part 4 with the fabric or the nonwoven fabric, a material is not limited to this, For example, the liquid retention part 4 can also be formed with foamable resin.

It is a top view of the lens cleaner 1 seen from the label surface 22 side. 2 is a plan view of the lens cleaner 1 as viewed from the recording surface 21 side. FIG. FIG. 3 is a side view of the lens cleaner 1 in a state where a cleaning liquid 201 is supplied to the liquid retaining unit 4. It is the GG sectional view taken on the line in FIG. 3 is a perspective view of a liquid retaining unit 4 and a guard unit 5. FIG. 3 is a side view of the lens cleaner 1 in a state where it is pulled in by the pulling rollers 103a, 103b, 103c of the disk device 100. FIG. FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional view of the lens cleaner 1 in a state in which a drawing roller 103c is in contact with a guard portion 5. It is a side view of the lens cleaner 1 in the state which is performing cleaning. It is sectional drawing of 5 A of guard parts. It is sectional drawing of the guard part 5B. FIG. 3 is a plan view of the lens cleaner 1A viewed from the recording surface 21 side.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1,1A Lens cleaner 2 Disc main body 3 Cleaning part 4, 4A Liquid retaining part 5, 5A, 5B, 5C Guard part 21 Recording surface 22 Label surface 23 Insertion hole 31 Front end part 32 Base end part 101 Optical pickup 102 Lens 201 Cleaning liquid

Claims (3)

The disc body, the cleaning portion disposed in the disc body so that the front end portion protrudes from one surface of the disc body and the cleaning portion is inserted through the insertion hole formed in the disc body. wherein a liquid having a liquid retaining property are liquid retaining together so as to be in contact with the base end portion of Ikatsu the cleaning portion covering the through hole is disposed on the other surface of the disk body of the cleaning unit A liquid retaining part that is supplied from the base end part toward the front end part, and configured to be able to clean the lens of the optical pickup,
On the other surface of the disc main body, a guard portion formed to have a thickness equal to or greater than the thickness of the liquid retaining portion is disposed so as to surround the liquid retaining portion without covering the upper surface of the liquid retaining portion. Lens cleaner.   The lens cleaner according to claim 1, comprising a plurality of the cleaning units, wherein each of the cleaning units is disposed at a position where the distances from the center of the disk main body are different from each other.   The lens cleaner according to claim 1, further comprising a plurality of the liquid retaining portions that respectively cover the plurality of insertion holes through which the cleaning portion is inserted.

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