JPH1090837A - Method for reclaiming disposable camera - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To efficiently reuse camera mechanism parts constituting a disposable camera again without increasing a cost while keeping quality. SOLUTION: The camera main body obtained after a photographic film and a cartridge are taken out is dissembled, so that a main body base part, a front cover, a rear cover, a winding knob, an exposure unit, the respective parts of a stroboscopic unit, and the unit mechanism parts are separated. The exposure unit and the stroboscopic unit are selected as the mechanism parts for a subject to be used again. As to the exposure unit; all the photographing lenses are cleaned, then shutter function inspection is performed. As to all the exposure units whose shutter speed is defective; a shutter blade is exchanged, and the exposure unit which passes re-inspection is utilized as reuse goods. As to all the stroboscopic units; a protector is cleaned, the bends of a battery leads are corrected, a synchro switch is exchanged, the stroboscopic function inspection is performed, and an accepted product is used again.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method for efficiently reusing a film unit with a lens after a photographed film is taken out.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A film unit with a lens has a photographic film and a cartridge pre-installed at the manufacturing stage in a unit main body in which a photographing mechanism is incorporated, and is assumed to be used once for a user. . After the photographing is performed on the photographic film loaded in advance, the film unit with the lens is collected in the developing laboratory as it is, and the work of taking out the cartridge containing the photographed photographic film, the film developing process, and the printing process are performed. Then, the developed photo film and the printed photo are provided to the user, and the unit body after the cartridge is removed is collected by the manufacturer of the film unit with the lens.
The manufacturer disassembles the collected unit body and basically sorts its components according to the type of material, such as metal, plastic, and paper, in order to reuse it as a raw material (referred to as recycling in this specification). Raw materials are recycled through processes such as grinding and melting for each material.

[0003] In addition to the above-mentioned recycling at the raw material level, it is also possible to reuse (hereinafter referred to as “reuse” in this specification) as it is at a component level or at a functionally independent unit composed of a plurality of components. Various ideas have been implemented. For example, JP-A-5-194
As described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 19, so that the unit body can be easily disassembled into functionally independent units,
The exposure unit and the strobe unit can be easily disassembled from the base of the main body in which the film storage chamber and the cartridge storage chamber are integrally formed.
As described in JP-A-8813, a unit body disassembly line and a production line are provided side by side to improve the efficiency of the unit body regeneration process.

[0004] For reuse at the component level or the unit mechanism component level, these functional tests are performed to ensure product quality. For example, the above-described exposure unit is composed of a plurality of components including shutter blades, constitutes a unit mechanism component that performs the function of opening and closing the shutter blades, and can independently inspect the shutter function. Therefore, for the exposure unit separated from the main body base,
A shutter test as described in JP-A-6-161001 is performed. Those that pass this functional inspection are supplied as non-defective products to the assembly line of the unit body, and those that do not pass are further disassembled and pulverized, and then recycled as raw materials.

[0005]

By the way, when recycling as raw materials, it is inevitable that the quality of the raw materials is reduced due to foreign matter or dirt being mixed in. Therefore, reuse at the unit mechanism component level is preferable. Therefore, it is desirable to determine the cause of the rejection and perform repair or adjustment work on the rejected one even after rejecting it after performing the functional inspection.However, such work becomes very complicated,
Processes such as re-inspection and re-correction are also required. On the contrary, the manufacturing cost may be higher than a product using a new component or a unit mechanism component.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to efficiently reuse parts or functionally independent unit mechanism parts to save resources as much as possible and to reduce production costs. Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for reproducing a film unit with a lens, which reduces the load on the film unit.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to achieve the above object, the present invention disassembles a recovered unit main body, separates functionally independent unit mechanism parts including movable parts, and performs a function test on the separated parts. However, for those units that failed this function inspection, correct and replace certain parts for all of them, and then perform the function inspection again and use the units that are passed for the unit to be regenerated. It was done.

When the shutter mechanism is used as such a unit mechanism component, the shutter blades are replaced with respect to all of the units that have failed the shutter test. As a result, it has been statistically confirmed that most of the reject factors are eliminated, and it is possible to reuse most of the factors. Therefore, it is possible to reuse the shutter mechanism with a high probability without performing a troublesome process such as inspecting a fine factor of rejection, correcting or repairing the factor. It is to be noted that the present invention can be applied to a strobe unit assembled to a unit main body, thereby greatly improving a reuse rate of the strobe unit.

[0009]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a film unit with a lens 2 comprises a unit body 3, a photographic film 4, and a cartridge 5. The unit main body 3 includes a main body base 7 formed of plastic, a front cover 8 and a rear cover 9. A cartridge chamber 10 and a film chamber 11 are formed in the main body base 7, and an aperture 12 for determining an exposure range for the photographic film 4 is formed between these two chambers.

When assembling the film unit with the lens, the exposure unit 14 and the strobe unit 15 are mounted on the front surface of the main body base 7, and the winding knob 16 is mounted on the upper surface of the cartridge chamber 10.
The front cover 8 is attached so as to cover the upper surface and the front surface.
Then, the cartridge 5 and the rolled photo film 4 from the bottom side of the main body base 7 are placed in the cartridge chamber 1 respectively.
At this time, the spool 5a of the cartridge 5 is engaged with a winding shaft integrally provided on the lower surface of the winding knob 16.

A rear cover 9 is placed on the rear surface of the main body base 7, and bottom covers 9a and 9b provided integrally at both lower ends of the rear cover 9 are bent to light-tightly close the bottom openings of the cartridge chamber 10 and the film chamber 11. The assembly of the film unit with the lens is completed. Reference numeral 17 shown in FIG. 1 indicates a cosmetic label to be affixed to the surface after the assembly of the lens-fitted film unit 2 is completed.

When the winding knob 16 is rotated counterclockwise, the spool 5a is rotated in the film winding direction to wind up the photographic film 14, and the photographic film 4 is wound into the cartridge 5. Two perforations are formed per frame on the photo film 4, and while the two perforations move to a predetermined position as the photo film 4 is wound, a sprocket incorporated in the exposure unit 14 is used. Rotate a certain angle. By this rotation, the shutter is charged, and the completion of the winding of one frame of the film is detected, and the winding is stopped.

When the shutter button 18 integrally formed on the upper surface of the front cover 8 is depressed, the pressing piece integrally formed on the lower surface of the shutter button 18 rotates the locking lever incorporated in the exposure unit 14. Then, a shutter release operation is performed. By this shutter release operation, the shutter blades incorporated in the exposure unit 14 perform opening and closing operations, and one image is taken through the imaging lens 20 assembled in the exposure unit 14.

When strobe light emission is required for photographing, a strobe button 21 provided integrally on the front surface of the front cover 8 is pressed. As a result, the contact piece 22 assembled on the front surface of the film chamber 11 comes into contact with a contact pattern portion provided at a predetermined position on the strobe printed circuit board 23 to perform charging. At the moment when the shutter blades are fully opened, the synchro switch 24 mounted on the strobe printed circuit board 23 is turned on, and strobe light emission is performed. A battery holder 25 also serving as a battery contact piece is attached to the strobe printed circuit board 23, and the battery 26 is attached in advance when the film unit with the lens is manufactured.

After photographing each frame of the photographic film 14, the lens-fitted film unit 2 is collected at a developing station as it is. At the photo lab, photo film 1
After confirming that all of the cartridges 4 are caught in the cartridge 5, the bottom cover 9a is opened and the cartridge 5 is taken out. After that, film development and print processing are performed in exactly the same procedure as a general cartridge that has already been photographed.
The developed photo film 4 and the printed photo are returned to the user.

The used unit body 3 after taking out the cartridge 5 is collected by the manufacturer. The collected unit body 3 is processed according to the procedure shown in FIG. First, the label 17 is peeled off before the unit body 3 is disassembled. The peeled label 17 is
All are sent to a recycling process for use as raw materials. When the unit body 3 is disassembled, it is separated into a body base 7, a front cover 8, a rear cover 9, an exposure unit 14, a strobe unit 15, and a winding knob 16.

Of these, the main body base 7, the front cover 8,
Each of the rear cover 9 and the winding knob 16 is sent to a recycling process for reuse as a raw material. Since all of these parts are plastic molded articles having a common composition, they can be crushed and melted in a lump, and by pelletizing, they can be used as raw materials when manufacturing a new unit body 3, or It can be recycled as a material for other plastic moldings. The front cover 8, the rear cover 9, and the hoisting knob 16 are all components that appear on the exterior, and the main body base 7 is a component that does not appear on the exterior, while dirt and damage may occur after use. Therefore, the main body base 7 can be reused as described in an embodiment described later.

The exposure unit 14, which is a unit mechanism component that performs the most important function at the time of photographing, is to be reused. As shown in FIG. 4, the exposure unit 14 is configured by incorporating a plurality of components into a base member 30 made of a plastic molded product. It is separably assembled to the front of the cylinder by nail coupling. A lens frame is also integrated with the base member 30, and an objective and an eyepiece for a finder are attached as shown in the figure, and are exposed through an objective window and an eyepiece window formed on the front cover 7 and the rear cover 9, respectively.

The front surface of the base member 30 is a flat surface with a pin and a shaft protruding from a required portion. The spacer sheet 31 is positioned and mounted by utilizing the engagement between the pin and the hole. , A shutter blade 33 is rotatably assembled. The spacer sheet 31 is made of a low-friction thin plastic sheet, and has a function of slidingly contacting the back surface of the shutter blade 33 to smoothly rotate the shutter blade 33. A spring 34 is attached between a pin protruding from the shutter blade 33 and a pin protruding from the base member 30, and biases the shutter blade 33 in the closing direction.

Positioning is performed by engagement of a pin and a hole so as to cover the shutter blade 33 and the spring 34, and the shutter cover 35 is attached to the base member 30 by pawl connection. The photographic lens 20 is held by the shutter cover 35 by fitting the photographic lens 20 into a cylindrical portion formed on the front surface of the shutter cover 35 and assembling the lens holder 36 from above with a claw connection.

On the upper surface of the base member 30, shafts 38, 39 and a bearing portion 40 are formed. A kick lever 41, a first spring 42, and a counter plate 43 are inserted into the shaft 38 in this order. A second spring 44 and a locking lever 45 are sequentially inserted into the shaft 39. The cam member 46 is inserted into the bearing portion 40. A sprocket 48 is fitted into the lower end of the shaft integrated with the cam member 46. Sprocket 48 is 180
Two pairs of pawls are provided at positions that are rotationally symmetrical in degrees. A leaf spring 49 is attached to the upper surface of the base member 30, and one end of the leaf spring 49 enters the rotation locus of the cam member 46.

The top plate 50 is connected to the base member 30 by nail coupling.
The upper ends of the shafts of the shafts 38 and 39 and the cam member 46 are positioned, and the relative positions of these upper ends are fixed. Thereby, the first and second springs 42, 44
Even when the urging force is constantly applied, the problem that the shafts 38 and 39 or the shaft of the cam member 46 is deformed and the distance between the shafts changes can be solved. In addition, the kicking lever 41, the locking lever 45, and the cam member 46 rotate while being in sliding contact with the shafts 38, 39 or the bearing portion 40 that support the kicking lever 41, the locking lever 45, and the cam member 46, respectively. Therefore, these members or the base member 30 are made of a plastic material having high wear resistance. The top plate 50 is made of transparent plastic, and a lens portion 51 for enlarging and observing the scale of the counter plate 43 is also integrally formed.

When the photo film 4 is transferred by rotating the winding knob 16 and the two perforations are moved, a pair of teeth of the sprocket 48 are sequentially engaged with them. To ensure this engagement, the leaf spring 4
Numeral 9 urges the sprocket 48 counterclockwise via the cam member 46 so that the preceding tooth of the pair of teeth presses against the photographic film 4.

When the pair of teeth sequentially engage the perforations, the transfer of the photographic film 4 causes the sprocket 4 to move.
8, the cam member 46 rotates counterclockwise.
This rotation causes the kicking lever 41 to rotate in the charging direction against the bias of the first spring 42. When the kicking lever 41 reaches the charge completion position, the locking of the locking lever 45 is released, and the locking lever 41 is rotated clockwise by the bias of the second spring 44 to lock the rotation of the hoisting knob 16. Frame winding is stopped. In addition, the kicking lever 41 is locked at the charging position by the rotation of the locking lever 41.

Immediately before the completion of the winding of one frame, the leaf spring 49 urges the cam member 46. When the teeth of the sprocket 48 come out of the perforations, the sprocket 48 clicks in the counterclockwise direction together with the cam member 46. Then, the preceding tooth of the other pair of teeth is pressed against the photographic film 4. As described above, when the film winding operation is performed, the shutter is charged while the cam member 46 and the sprocket 48 are rotated by 180 ° following the transfer of the photographic film 4, and the counter plate 43 is also rotated by the rotation of the cam member 46. One step forward.

When the shutter button 18 is pressed down, the locking lever 45 rotates counterclockwise and the kick lever 4
When the lock of 1 is released, the kicking lever 41 is rotated clockwise by the bias of the first spring 42. As a result, the small protrusion at the upper end of the shutter blade 33 is kicked off, and the shutter blade 33 rotates clockwise against the bias of the spring 34 to open the photographing opening 53 formed in the base member 30, and the photographic film 4 is released. Is exposed. After the opening, the shutter blade 33 returns to the closed position by the bias of the spring 34,
The exposure is completed when the photographing opening 53 is closed. When the kick lever 41 rotates from the charge position to the release completion position as described above, the kick lever 41 holds the locking lever 45 at the unlock position, and the winding knob 16 is in the unlocked state. Therefore, the film winding operation can be performed, and thereafter, the photographing can be sequentially performed by repeating the above operation.

As described above, the exposure unit 14 can perform its own photographing function by rotating the cam member 46 or the sprocket 48 from the outside and further rotating the locking lever 45 from the outside. ing. Therefore, it is possible to set only the exposure unit 14 in a dedicated inspection device and perform a shutter function inspection which is a prerequisite for reuse.

Then, the following steps are applied to the exposure unit 14 separated from the main body 7 by disassembling the collected unit main body 3 and reusing it.
First, after cleaning the surface of the photographing lens 20 with respect to all the exposure units 14, the exposure unit 14 is positioned on a dedicated measuring instrument, and a shutter function test is performed. The apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application No. 8-216389 can be used for the cleaning process of the taking lens 20, for example.

In inspecting the shutter function, a parallel light beam of a constant light amount is made incident on the front surface of the taking lens 20, and the shutter is released to open and close the shutter blades. An area-type CCD image sensor is arranged on a focal plane behind the aperture 12, and based on an output signal thereof,
The light irradiation time (corresponding to the shutter time), the light amount (corresponding to the transmittance of the photographing lens 20), and the light receiving pattern (corresponding to the lens surface accuracy of the photographing lens 20) are inspected.

The inspection at the time of shutter time is described in JP-A-6-161.
001 can be performed. The greatest factor in determining whether or not the exposure unit 14 can withstand reuse is the reproducibility at the time of the shutter. Since the film unit with a lens is easily used in various environments because of its simplicity of use, foreign matter such as sand often enters the exposure unit 14. In particular, if such foreign matter enters the periphery of the shutter blade 33, the opening and closing of the shutter blade 33 tend to be unstable. Therefore, it is first checked whether or not the shutter time is within an appropriate range, and a product that does not satisfy this is an NG product.

Even if the shutter time is within the proper range, a lens having an insufficient light quantity or a light receiving pattern having a light receiving pattern extending beyond a predetermined level in a peripheral portion other than a point at the center of the screen will not be used. Since it is considered that the surface of the taking lens 20 is very dirty or the surface of the taking lens 20 is damaged, these exposure units 14 are also NG products.
Passed products that have passed this shutter function inspection are then subjected to an appearance inspection. In the appearance inspection, the exposure unit 14 is imaged from multiple directions with a video camera, and whether or not the shape matches the reference pattern is automatically determined by image processing. Products that have passed this visual inspection are sent to the reuse process.

Also, as a result of the shutter function inspection, even if the shutter time is out of the proper range, if the light quantity is at a level corresponding to the shutter time and the light receiving pattern has no abnormality, the next shutter It is sent to the blade replacement process. Shooting lens 2 for other NG products
Although it is possible to recover the product as a reused product by exchanging 0s, in this embodiment, it is excluded from the reuse target and is returned to the recycling process.

In the shutter blade replacement step, after confirming that the spring 34 has not come off, the shutter cover 35 is removed from the exposure unit 14, and the spacer sheet 31,
The three parts of the shutter blade 33 and the spring 34 are replaced. If the spring 34 has come off, the spring 34 is applied to a predetermined position as a correcting operation. When the shutter cover 35 is detached, the photographing lens 20 is also detached integrally with the shutter cover 35, so that the photographing lens 20 does not separate and is convenient. Further, this replacement work is performed manually, but it is also possible to use an automatic machine. As described above, the cause of the defect of the exposure unit 14 is almost always that a foreign matter is mixed around the shutter blade and the shutter time becomes unstable. Is passed, and can be reused. Those that have become NG products again in the re-inspection of the shutter function are sent to the recycling process as NG products.

As described above, the entire exposure unit 14 is subjected to cleaning of the photographing lens and inspection of the shutter function, so that the steps up to this point can be automated. . Regarding the instability at the shutter time, which has the highest failure rate in the shutter function inspection, the spacer sheet 31, the shutter blade 33, and the spring 34 are exchanged for those samples at once. Can be relatively easily automated. It has been statistically confirmed that most of the NG products that have undergone the shutter blade replacement step can be revived as reused products, and low cost and efficient reuse can be performed without much trouble.

Further, with respect to the strobe unit 15 separated from the main body 7, the battery 26 is first removed, and then the protector is washed, the battery contact pieces are corrected, and the synchro switch is replaced for all of the batteries. . The protector is a component indicated by reference numeral 53 in FIG. 1 or FIG. 2, and is made of a transparent plastic to protect the front surface of the flash tube. The protector cleaning can be performed by an automatic machine as described in, for example, JP-A-6-175296.

Most of the causes of failure when the strobe unit 15 is reused are deformation of the synchro switch 24 and deformation of the battery contact piece 25. Therefore, for the total number of the strobe units 15 separated from the main body base 7, first, countermeasures are taken against the causes of these defects. In order to simplify the work of replacing the synchro switch 24, the synchro switch 24 is not soldered to the strobe printed circuit board 23, but is also electrically and mechanically connected to the strobe printed circuit board 23 by nail coupling. In addition, the bending of the battery contact piece 25 is performed by imaging the battery contact piece 25 from multiple directions with a video camera, and driving the bending straightening member driven by an air cylinder or the like so that the shape matches the reference pattern. This is done by pressing against

Through the above steps, most of the strobe unit 15 can be used as a reuse compatible product. In the strobe function inspection, the strobe unit 15 is positioned on a dedicated inspection pallet, and in the process of sequentially passing through the inspection machine, a charging time is measured, a light emission timing is measured after a synchro switch is turned on, and a light emission amount is measured. Is performed, and the sample that clears these inspections is sent to a reuse process. NG products are sent to the recycling process as they are regardless of which inspection item is defective.

As described above, with respect to the strobe unit 15, the most probable cause of the defect is given to all the collected strobe units 15, so that these allowances are automatically applied. It is also easy to process. In addition, even if various inspections are not performed for the fine factors, most of the above-mentioned benefits can be sorted out as reused products, and the exposure unit 14
As in the case of, reuse can be performed at low cost.

Although the present invention has been described based on the illustrated embodiment, in order to simplify the operation of exchanging the shutter blades of the exposure unit 14, the shutter cover 35 is provided.
It is effective that the shutter blades 33 can be removed without removing the shutter blades. For this purpose, the shutter blade 33 is made of a plastic 2
A unit including the spring 34 may be formed together with the support plates so that the support plate can be pulled out from the exposure unit 14 together.

The exposure unit 14 does not necessarily have to be in a unit form that can be separated from the main body base 7. For example, the shafts 38 and 39 and the bearing 40 are connected to the main body base 7.
It is also possible to integrally provide components such as the kicking lever 41 with these components. In this case, the exposure unit including the main body 7 is handled as an exposure unit, and those that have passed the shutter function test may be reused together with the main body 7 to further increase the number of parts to be reused.

[0041]

As described above, according to the present invention, after disassembling the used and collected unit main body, functionally independent unit mechanism parts including at least movable parts are separated and the total number thereof is reduced. After performing a functional inspection and rejecting the product in this functional inspection, all parts must be replaced or corrected for a specific part with a particularly high probability of failure, and then re-tested. Is used for the unit body to be reclaimed after rejection, so after a complicated inspection process involving many items, reuse is performed through various parts replacement and repair according to each defect. Unlike the method, it is possible to easily and efficiently reuse the unit mechanical parts without increasing the manufacturing cost while keeping the reuse rate high.
In particular, when a shutter mechanism unit including a shutter blade is used as a unit mechanism component, most of the components can be reused only by replacing the shutter blade, which is very effective.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an external view of a film unit with a lens.

FIG. 2 is an exploded perspective view of the film unit with a lens.

FIG. 3 is a schematic view showing a process of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an exploded perspective view of the exposure unit.

[Explanation of symbols]

 2 Film unit with lens 3 Unit main body 7 Main body base 8 Front cover 9 Rear cover 14 Exposure unit 15 Strobe unit

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A method of reproducing a film unit with a lens in which a photographic film and a cartridge are previously incorporated in a unit body including a photographing mechanism, wherein the photographed photographic film is taken out together with the cartridge, and the unit body recovered is disassembled. A functionally independent unit mechanism component including at least a movable part is separated and its function inspection is performed, and a product determined to be a pass product by this function inspection is used for a unit body to be reproduced, and the function inspection is rejected. Replacement or correction of certain parts of all products judged to be acceptable, and then re-performing the function inspection and then using the products judged to be acceptable for the unit body to be regenerated. Characteristic method of reproducing a film unit with a lens. 2. The unit mechanism component includes a shutter blade, a spring for urging the shutter blade in a closing direction, and a kick lever for opening and closing the shutter blade against the urging of the spring. Shutter mechanism,
3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the shutter blade is replaced when a specified shutter time cannot be obtained when the shutter time of the shutter mechanism is measured.