JP5019062B2 - Disc tray, disc recording / reproducing apparatus, and disc medium separating method - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a recording / reproducing apparatus that uses a flexible disk medium as a recording medium, and relates to a disk tray that is provided in such a recording / reproducing apparatus and on which a disk medium is placed. It relates to a disc tray. An example of such a disk medium is a thin optical disk.

  In general, in a rewritable optical disk such as a phase change optical disk, information is recorded / reproduced by irradiating a recording film with laser light and changing optical characteristics such as reflectivity and optical phase of the recording film. As such an optical disc, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM are generally used, and HD DVD-RAM, HD DVD-RW, and the like are becoming widespread as optical discs capable of further increasing the capacity.

  In addition, with the rapid progress of the information society in recent years, it has become essential to record and reproduce a huge amount of information. As one means for satisfying such a demand, a plurality of the above-mentioned optical discs are contained in a cartridge. A collective device that stores a plurality of cartridges and includes a plurality of cartridges has been proposed. However, since these aggregate devices are as thick as 1.2 mm per optical disk, the size of the device itself storing these cartridges becomes considerably large.

  In order to solve these problems, the thickness of each optical disk is reduced to 0.3 mm or less, and a cartridge for storing these optical disks or a thin optical disk recording / reproducing apparatus in which the size of the collecting apparatus is compactly combined. Has been proposed.

  For example, in Patent Document 1, optical disks are arranged and stored one by one on a partition sheet, and a desired optical disk is selected from the optical disks stored in each partition sheet when recording and reproducing information. A system is disclosed in which an L-shaped claw installed at the tip of the transport arm is hooked into an inner peripheral hole provided in the inner periphery of the disc and transported to the recording / reproducing unit.

  Further, in order to stabilize the rotation of the optical disk transported to the recording / reproducing unit by the above-described transport method, the disk using a mechanism that stabilizes the fluctuation in the rotation axis direction of the optical disk medium by the pressure difference of the air flow based on Bernoulli's law. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-228667 discloses a posture control during rotation and a recording / reproducing operation.

JP 2005-310194 A JP2007-12204

  According to the technique described in Patent Document 1, in order to handle a disc inner peripheral hole with a claw when transporting the disc, the inner peripheral hole of a thin thin optical disc may depend on the magnitude of the force applied to the claw. It turns out that the problem of deformation occurs.

  In order to suppress the deformation problem of the inner peripheral hole of such a thin optical disk, the thin optical disk is adsorbed by negative pressure control using a suction pad instead of hooking the inner peripheral hole with a nail and handling it. Means for moving the image are also proposed.

  Further, a method has been proposed in which an optical disk is recorded and reproduced using the method described in Patent Document 2 and then transported to a disk tray by the vacuum suction method as described above.

  Referring to FIG. 5, a thin optical disk 51 is placed on the disk tray 50. Consider a case where a suction pad is sucked to the suction portion 52 on the thin optical disk 51 and the suction pad lifts the thin optical disk 51 from the disk tray 50.

  Referring to FIG. 6, the CD section of FIG. 5 will be described. When the suction pad 53 sucks the thin optical disk 51, the thin optical disk 51 is deformed into the same shape as the suction pad 53. Although a new space 54 is generated between the space 51, the space 54 is a closed space surrounded by the thin optical disk 51 and the disk tray 50 and is not open to the atmosphere, so a negative pressure is generated. For this reason, it has been found that if the thin optical disk 51 is sucked, the disk tray 50 is lifted at the same time, which causes a conveyance error.

  The present invention has been made in view of such problems, and the problem to be solved by the present invention is that when lifting a disk medium from the disk tray, it is possible to lift only the disk medium without lifting the disk tray. Is to provide new technology.

  In order to solve the above-described problems, the present invention provides the following techniques.

  First, as one aspect of the present invention, in a disc tray on which a flexible disc medium is placed, a recess that forms at least a space surrounded by the disc medium and the disc tray when the disc medium is placed. The disc tray is provided with at least one.

  As another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a disk recording / reproducing apparatus that includes the above-described disk tray and performs reading or writing using a flexible disk medium as a recording medium.

  According to another aspect of the present invention, in a method for separating a flexible disk medium placed on a disk tray from the disk tray, the disk tray has at least a disk medium and a disk when the disk medium is loaded. At least one concave portion forming a space surrounded by the tray is provided, and a part of the disk medium positioned on the concave portion is sucked and lifted, and a space between the disk medium and the disk tray is formed. There is provided a disc medium separating method including an inflow stage in which air flows into a space formed by a recess through a flow path including a step, and a stage in which the entire disc medium is separated from a disc tray.

  According to the present invention, when the disk medium is lifted from the disk tray, the gap between the disk medium and the disk tray is provided by providing the recess on the disk tray and forming a space surrounded by the disk medium and the disk tray. Thus, air efficiently flows into the space formed by the recesses, so that negative pressure can be prevented from being generated between the disk medium and the disk tray. As a result, it is possible to prevent the disk medium and the disk tray from coming into close contact with each other due to negative pressure.

  The problem that the disk medium is in close contact with the disk tray and is difficult to come off is particularly likely to occur with a thin disk medium. The thin disk medium is particularly suitable for a multi-disc type disk recording / reproducing apparatus that accommodates a plurality of disk media and replaces the disk medium placed on the disk tray by an autochanger. Therefore, the present invention is also particularly suitable for a disk recording / reproducing apparatus using a thin disk medium and a multi-continuous type disk recording / reproducing apparatus.

  Hereinafter, the present invention will be described with reference to examples.

  A disc tray 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. Referring to FIG. 1, a flexible thin optical disk 2 is placed on a disk tray 1. The thin optical disk 2 is lifted from the disk tray 1 by the suction pad and is transported to the optical disk rotation drive system 10 as shown in FIG. 2, for example. At this time, the suction pad is a suction portion that is an area on the thin optical disk 2 3 adsorbs. The disc tray 1 is provided with a central hole 4 coaxial with the rotational axis of the thin optical disc 2, and a plurality of notches 5 are provided on the outer circumference of the disc tray 1 on the circumference located below the suction portion 3. .

  The area of each notch 5 is smaller than the area of the suction part 3. Thereby, when the thin optical disk 2 is sucked, the suction pad can be stably pressed, and the thin optical disk 2 can be sucked more reliably.

  In the present embodiment, the virtual circumference on the disc tray 1 is equally divided and the cutout portions 5 are evenly arranged. The notch 5 is a recess provided on the disc tray and does not penetrate the disc tray 1.

  When the suction pad sucks and lifts the suction part 3, the thin optical disk 2 is deformed to have flexibility and forms a space between the disk tray 1, but under the suction part 3 on the disk tray 1. Since there is a dent in the position corresponding to the above, air easily flows through the gap between the disc tray 1 and the thin optical disc 2 as a flow path. In particular, since the dent is close to the center hole 4, air easily flows from the gap between the disk tray 1 and the thin optical disk 2 along the center hole 4. Therefore, when the thin optical disk 2 is adsorbed by the suction pad, it becomes difficult to form a closed space between the disk tray 1 and the thin optical disk 2, avoiding lifting the disk tray 1 together with the thin optical disk 2, Occurrence of transport errors can be avoided.

  When the thin optical disk 2 is sucked, the tip of the suction pad is pressed against the thin optical disk 2. At this time, if the thin optical disk 2 corresponding to the suction portion 3 is not sufficiently supported by the disk tray 1, the suction is not performed. There is a risk of becoming insufficient. Therefore, the area of the notch 5 is made smaller than the area of the suction part 3. In this way, there is a flat portion that is not a concave portion on the surface of the disc tray 1 corresponding to the portion immediately below the suction portion 3, and the thin optical disk 2 corresponding to the suction portion 3 is supported by the flat portion. Therefore, the tip of the suction pad can be firmly pressed against the thin optical disk 2 and a sufficient suction force can be obtained.

  Here, the optical disk rotation drive system 10 which is the transport destination of the thin optical disk 2 will be briefly described with reference to FIG. The thin optical disk 2 is set on a disk rotation stabilizing plate 12 via a spacer 11, fixed to a rotating system by, for example, a magnet chuck 13, rotated by a spindle motor 14, and recorded or reproduced by an optical head 15. . The spacer 11 and the disk rotation stabilizing plate 12 are integrated.

  Next, the disc tray 20 according to the second embodiment will be described. The disc tray 20 has substantially the same configuration as the disc tray 1 of the first embodiment, but only the cutout portion 5 is different. Therefore, this embodiment will also be described with reference to FIG. 1, but when referring to FIG. 1 for explaining this embodiment, the disk tray 1 is read as the disk tray 20, and the cutout portion 5 is replaced with the cutout portion 21. And shall be read as In the first embodiment, the cutout portion 5 is a recess that does not penetrate the disc tray 1, whereas in this embodiment, the cutout portion 21 is a through hole that penetrates the disc tray 20. That is, the notch 21 is a through-hole penetrating from the surface on which the thin optical disk 2 of the disk tray 20 is placed to the back surface thereof.

  A cross section of the disk tray 20 in FIG. 1A-B will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 3 illustrates a state immediately before the thin optical disk 2 is sucked by the suction pad 22 from the state in which the thin optical disk 2 is mounted on the disk tray 20 and the transport operation is started.

  In FIG. 3, when the thin optical disk 2 is vacuum-sucked by the suction pad 22, a space 23 is created between the suction pad 22 and the thin optical disk 2, and thereby the thin optical disk 2 is sucked. At this time, as shown in FIG. 3, the thin optical disk 2 is deformed into a substantially square shape according to the attractive force of the suction pad 22 to form a space 23. Here, since the notch 21 is a through hole, the space 23 is a space opened to the atmosphere via the notch 21 and is not a closed space. Therefore, since no negative pressure due to the closed space is generated between the disc tray 20 and the thin optical disc 2, when the suction pad 22 sucks and lifts the thin optical disc 2, only the thin optical disc 2 is lifted. Thus, the disc tray 20 is not lifted.

  Next, a disk tray 30 will be described as a third embodiment of the present invention with reference to FIG. In the first and second embodiments, the notches 5 and 21 are equally arranged on the outer circumference of the center hole 4 of the disc trays 1 and 20, respectively. On the other hand, the cutout portion 31 of the disc tray 30 is disposed only on the outer circumference of the center hole 32 at a location where the suction pad contacts via the thin optical disc 2. The suction part 33 in the figure shows a place where the suction pad contacts via the thin optical disk 2. The notch 31 may be a recess like the notch 5 or a through hole like the notch 21.

  Generally, when the suction pad sucks the thin optical disk on the disk tray, the positional relationship between the disk tray and the suction pad is fixed, and each time the suction pad transports the thin optical disk, the positional relationship between the two changes. That's not true. Therefore, the suction portion 33 where the suction pad arranged at the tip of the transport arm contacts the disc tray 30 via the thin optical disc 2 is at the same position every time. For this reason, the effect similar to Example 1 or 2 can be acquired by providing the notch part 31 only in the position corresponding to the adsorption | suction part 33. FIG.

  As mentioned above, although this invention was demonstrated according to the Example, this invention is not limited to this, It cannot be overemphasized that it can change freely within the technical scope of invention.

  For example, in the above-described embodiments, a thin optical disk has been described as the disk medium. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and can be similarly applied as long as a flexible disk medium is used. I can do it.

  Further, the number and shape of the notches are not limited to those shown in the drawings, and the number may be appropriately increased or decreased according to the size of the disk medium or the like.

  In the above embodiment, the concave portion is provided on the surface of the disc tray. However, a convex portion may be provided instead of the concave portion, or both the concave portion and the convex portion may be provided.

  It should be noted that the present invention relates to a disk tray that uses suction when transporting a loaded disk medium, and does not use suction when fixing the disk medium to the disk tray. .

It is a figure for demonstrating the disc tray 1 which concerns on Example 1 of this invention. FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining an optical disk rotation drive system 10 that is an example of a transport destination of a thin optical disk 2 from a disk tray 1. It is a figure for demonstrating the state just before conveying the thin optical disk 2 from the disk tray 20 which concerns on Example 2 of this invention, and is a figure corresponding to the AB cross section of FIG. It is a figure for demonstrating the disk tray 30 which concerns on Example 3 of this invention. It is a figure for demonstrating the conventional disc tray. FIG. 6 is a view for explaining a state immediately before a thin optical disc 51 is transported from a disc tray 50, and corresponds to a cross section taken along line CD in FIG.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1, 20, 30 Disc tray 2 Thin optical disk 3, 33 Adsorption part 4, 32 Center hole 5, 21, 31 Notch part 10 Optical disk rotation drive system 11 Spacer 12 Disk rotation stabilization board 13 Magnet chuck 14 Spindle motor 15 Optical head 22 Suction pad 23, 24 space

Claims (15)

In a disc tray for placing a disc medium having flexibility,
When the disc medium is placed, at least one recess is formed that forms a space surrounded by at least the disc medium and the disc tray, and the recess is a recess that does not penetrate the disc tray. And disc tray. In a disc tray for placing a disc medium having flexibility,
A plurality of concave portions that form a space surrounded by at least the disk medium and the disk tray when the disk medium is placed are provided on a circumference coaxial with the rotation axis of the disk tray. Disc tray characterized by.   3. The disc tray according to claim 2, wherein the concave portion is a recess that does not penetrate the disc tray.   3. The disc tray according to claim 2, wherein the concave portion is a through hole penetrating the disc tray. 5. The disc tray according to claim 2 , wherein the recess is provided at a predetermined position corresponding to a position immediately below a region where the means for adsorbing the disc medium contacts the disc medium. Disc tray characterized by.   6. The disk tray according to claim 1, wherein an area of the area corresponding to one of the recesses on the disk medium is such that one of the means for adsorbing the disk medium and the disk medium are in contact with each other. A disc tray characterized by being smaller than the area.   A disk recording / reproducing apparatus comprising the disk tray according to claim 1, wherein the disk recording / reproducing apparatus performs reading or writing using the disk medium as a recording medium. The disc recording / reproducing apparatus according to claim 7,
Comprising at least one means for adsorbing the disk medium to lift the disk medium from the disk tray;
The disk recording / reproducing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the sucking means sucks at least a part of an area on the concave portion of the disk medium. In a method of separating a flexible disc medium placed on a disc tray from the disc tray,
The disk tray has a plurality of recesses on a circumference coaxial with the rotation axis of the disk tray , at least when the disk medium is placed, a space surrounded by the disk medium and the disk tray is formed. Because
A part of the disk medium located above the recess is sucked up and lifted, and air flows into the space formed by the recess through a flow path including a space between the disk medium and the disk tray. An inflow phase to
Separating the entire disk medium from the disk tray. The disk medium separation method according to claim 9, wherein
The recess has an opening that is open to the atmosphere with the disk medium placed thereon,
In the inflow step, the air flows into the space formed by the recess using the space between the disk medium and the disk tray and the opening as a flow path, and the disk medium separating method.   The disk medium separation method according to claim 10, wherein the opening is provided on a side surface of the disk tray or the spacer.   11. The disk medium separating method according to claim 10, wherein the recess is a through hole provided in both the disk tray or the disk medium separating method and the spacer.   13. The disk medium separating method according to claim 9, wherein the disk medium is an optical disk, and the disk tray has transparency to light used for reading or writing the disk medium. A disc medium separation method characterized by the above. 14. The disk medium separation method according to claim 9 , wherein the recess is provided at a predetermined position corresponding to a position immediately below an area where the disk medium adsorbing means contacts the disk medium. A disk medium separation method comprising: In the disk medium separation method according to any one of claims 9 to 14, the area of the region corresponding to one of the recesses on the disk medium placed on the disc tray is adsorbed to lift the disk medium A disk medium separation method characterized by being smaller than the area of the region.

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