JPS6193978A - Electronic timepiece - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To increase power generating efficiency and the degree of freedom in size and to obtain a power generating mechanism having high durability by providing a charging circuit having a reverse current preventive element between both of an accumulating means and overcharge preventive means. CONSTITUTION:The rotating force by a rotary weight 51 is transmitted to a rotor 53 by an accelerating wheel train 52. The magnetic field change generated by the rotation of the rotor 53 is transmitted via a stator 54 to a coil 55, by which an induced voltage is generated. The generated electric power is accumulated in a capacitor 57 and is supplied to a timepiece body 56. A limiter 58 prevents the overcharge of the capacitor 57. A diode 59 for preventing reverse current makes half-wave rectification of the AC voltage generated by the coil 55 and prevents the consumption of the power accumulated in the capacitor 57 through the coil 55 when the power is not generated in the coil 55.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field] The present invention relates to an energy source for an electronic watch that uses electrical energy as an energy source, such as a crystal watch that has become mainstream in recent years.

[Prior art]

Conventionally, almost all the energy source for electronic watches was batteries. This battery has a lifespan determined by its capacity and the current consumption of the watch body, and the hassle of replacing the battery has always been the biggest drawback of electronic watches.

In order to overcome this drawback, attempts have been made to provide a power generation mechanism inside the watch. The attempt was made in the 1970s to
17866, the power generation efficiency is poor, the size is large, and there are problems with durability, so it has not been put into practical use. Furthermore, the conventional rectifier circuit for an alternating current generator has four diodes arranged in a bridge as shown in FIG. 4, and has a large number of elements, which hinders its application to small devices such as watches.

〔the purpose〕

The present invention eliminates the above-mentioned drawbacks, and eliminates the trouble of replacing five droplets by installing a power generation mechanism inside the watch that has extremely high power generation efficiency, a high degree of flexibility in terms of size, and excellent durability. It is intended to provide an electronic clock that is not available.

〔overview〕

The electronic timepiece according to the present invention has an alternating current generating means, a rectifying means, a power storage means, and an overcharge prevention means, and the rectification means is composed of one backflow prevention element, and both the power storage means and the overcharge prevention means are provided. This electronic timepiece includes a charging circuit in which a backflow prevention element, which is the rectifying means, is arranged between the rectifier and the power generating means.

〔Example〕

The present invention will be explained using figures.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the concept of a crystal wristwatch system that effectively utilizes the present invention.

Reference numeral 1 is a means for generating rotational torque, and the center of rotation and the center of gravity may be eccentric, or it may be rotated by operating an external operating member such as a winding stem. The speed of this rotating motion of the rotating means 10 is increased by the speed increasing gear train 2 to rotate the rotor of the converter A30 as a power generating mechanism to generate an alternating current. This alternating current is rectified by the rectifier circuit 4 and stored in the power storage means 5. In this embodiment, an electric double layer capacitor, which is a large capacity capacitor, is used as the power storage means. Using this large capacity capacitor as a power source, a control circuit 6 including a crystal as a time standard and a drive circuit 7 controlled by this control circuit B are operated. Energy is supplied by the drive circuit 7 and converter B8 is operated, and this The movement of the transducer B8 is transmitted to the hand 10 by the deceleration wheel train 9, and the time is displayed.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of the converter A3 as a power generation mechanism.

A stator 21 is arranged to surround a rotor 20 including a permanent magnet 20α. The fill 22 is wound around a magnetic core 22α, and the magnetic core 22a and the stator 21 are connected by screws 23.
It is fixed by.

As this rotor 20 rotates, the coil
R6) A current expressed as T+ ” is generated.・N
= Number of turns of the coil φ: Number of magnetic flux passing through the magnetic core 22α for 2 hours IR:
Resistance ω of the coil: rotational speed TJ of the rotor 20 = inductance of the coil This electromotive force is an alternating current having an approximately i-curve.

Further, the rotor 20 and the hole in the stator 21 surrounding it are concentric circles and surround the rotor magnet over almost the entire circumference. This minimizes the force (pulling torque) that forces the rotor to stay in place.

FIG.
FIG. This sixth
In the figure, an unbalanced wheel 31 whose center of rotation and center of gravity are eccentric is used as a rotating means. 62 is the main plate, 36
The rotational motion caused by the unbalance of the unbalanced wheel 31, which is a receiver, becomes the rotational motion of the rotor magnet 20α by the speed-increasing gear train 31 a + 34 and the rotor pinion 22b. Reference numeral 226 denotes a coil lead board on which the terminals of the coil are processed, and the coil lead board 22b and the circuit board 35 come into contact with each other, so that the electric power induced in the coil is transmitted to the circuit.

As described above, if the pulling torque of the rotor is small, the unbalanced appearance of the unbalanced vehicle 31 may be small. The minimum condition is (rotor pulling torque) < (unbalanced torque of unbalanced vehicle).

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a conventional rectifier circuit.

The rectifier circuit consists of four diodes: 41, 42, 43, and 44. Reference numeral 5 denotes a power storage means, and in this embodiment, an electric double layer capacitor, which is a large capacity capacitor, is used. When electric power shown by a thin line 45 is induced in the zero film 22, the current flows as shown by the thin line and is stored in the capacitor 5. ◇Also, when the power shown by the broken line 46 is induced in the coil, the current flows as shown by the broken line and is stored in the capacitor 5 in the same direction as at 450.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram of a charging circuit according to the present invention.

The rotational force from the rotary weight 51 is transferred to the quadrupler 53 by the speed increasing gear train 52.
tell to. Changes in the magnetic field caused by the rotation of the rotor 53 are transmitted to the coil 55 via the stator 54, and an induced voltage is generated at both ends of the coil.

57 is a capacitor which is a power storage means, and a coil 55
The power generated at 01.02 is stored and supplied to the clock body 56. The overcharge prevention circuit 58 has a voltage exceeding the withstand voltage of the capacitor 57.

59 is a backflow prevention diode which performs half-wave rectification of the alternating current power generated by the coil 55. Moreover, it also serves to prevent the power stored in the capacitor 57 from being lost through the coil 55 when the coil 55 is not generating power.

Also, by placing the diode 59 between the coil 55 and both the limiter 58 and the capacitor 57, when the diode 59 cuts the half-wave rectification current, that is, the voltage during the 660 period in FIG. 6 is applied to the limiter 58, increasing the charging effect. - It also prevents the rate from dropping.

FIG. 6 shows a comparison of the current waveform flowing through the power storage means 57 between the conventional rectifier circuit shown in FIG. 4 and the rectification circuit using one diode 59 according to the present invention shown in FIG.

60 is the reference line. 61 is the current generated in the conventional rectifier circuit, 62 is the current generated in the present invention, 63 is the loss due to voltage drop in the conventional rectifier circuit, and 64- is the loss due to voltage drop in the rectifier circuit according to the present invention. It's a minute.

Conventionally, the amount of charge stored in the power storage means is the area encompassed by 61 and 63, and the amount of charge according to the present invention is the area encompassed by 62 and 64. In this area comparison, there is almost no difference and the power storage performance is the same.The reason why there is no difference in power storage performance even with half-wave rectification compared to conventional full-wave rectification is explained below.0The period cut by half-wave rectification ( (shown as 66 in FIG. 6), no current flows through the coil 22, and therefore the brake torque applied to the rotor is small, so the movement of the rotating weight becomes faster. That is, the energy for the 660 period is stored as kinetic energy of the rotary weight and released to the power generation source. Therefore, the peak value of velo 2 is also large compared to 61.

Also, the fact that the rectification loss is halved by converting two diodes into one works reasonably well. As a result, despite half-wave rectification, its power generation and storage performance is not worse than after-wave rectification.

The control circuit 6, drive circuit 7, converter B8, deceleration wheel train 9, and pointer 1° from the power storage means 5 in FIG. 1 are the same as the conventional ones, and well-known mechanisms are used.

According to this embodiment described above, an automatic optical crystal watch is realized because an unbalanced wheel is used as the rotating means.

Regarding the power generation mechanism, the coil movable unit type shown in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 50-17866 has a limit in increasing the size of the coil because the coil is rotated, and the power generation efficiency cannot be increased. Also, the brush part is a mechanical contact point, so there is always concern about the mother.

Also, in terms of size, it has to be thick in order to obtain the number of turns of the coil. In addition, it is difficult to process thin cylinders with magnets, and strong magnets such as rare earth magnets that have been put into practical use in recent years are difficult to use.This also has the disadvantage of not being able to increase power generation efficiency. For example, it is possible to arrange magnets and coils, which are the components of a generator, in a layout separated from each other, and they can be set according to the required characteristics.

The coil can also be made much larger than the coil rotating unit type, and the power generation efficiency can be increased.The magnet is also thick-walled and cylindrical, and processing is extremely simple, making it suitable for all kinds of magnets, including rare earth magnets. It can be used.

In addition, since the magnetic flux of the magnet is taken out by constructing a magnetic circuit using high permeability materials such as the stator and the magnetic core, the magnetic flux N and φ interlinking the coils is extremely large. Therefore, from this aspect as well, the power generation efficiency is greatly improved. It's getting expensive.

In addition, since each element can be arranged in a distributed manner, it can be freely placed in the space between other components, such as the wheel train and circuits, considering the overall layout of the watch, resulting in extremely high space efficiency.

Further, in this embodiment, a large capacity capacitor is used as the power storage means. A capacitor is not a chemical reaction like a silver battery, but a physical phenomenon, and the lifespan of the power storage device itself is extremely long.With this system, a lifespan similar to that of a conventional spring-type watch can be obtained, and of course, it is easy to replace the battery. It is possible to create clocks with high precision, such as crystal clocks, without any hassle.

By using half-wave rectification using one diode as a rectifier circuit, the conventionally required four elements are reduced to one, which is extremely advantageous in terms of space.

In addition, the mounting is simplified and the cost is not only reduced by the cost of three diodes, but the yield of the entire circuit is also improved, which has a great effect.

Reliability has also been improved due to the simpler configuration.

Also, by placing the diode closer to the generator than the limiter, it absorbs the negative effects of half-wave rectification when current is cut, improving rectification efficiency.

Of course, the present invention is not limited to this embodiment.

Regarding the rotation means, although this embodiment utilizes the rotation motion of an unbalanced wheel, the present invention is not limited to this.

For example, it may be used in conjunction with means for rotating the rotor of the generator by rotating an external operating member such as a winding stem.

As a combined method, there is also a method of using a rotation means using an unbalanced wheel in the first stage of the winding stem, and driving the speed increasing gear train by the rotation of the winding stem in the first stage of the winding stem. It is also conceivable to use a rotating means using a wheel so that the winding stem is not transmitted to the winding stem via a rocking wheel, so that the winding stem does not act as a brake for the rotation of the unbalanced wheel.

In addition, the unbalanced portion of the unbalanced vehicle is arranged in almost the same cross section as the speed increasing gear train, generator, etc. in FIG. 3, and the effect of making the vehicle thinner is significant.

Moreover, this unbalanced portion 516 is not limited to this structure, and other structures are of course possible. For example, if it is placed on top of the receiver 53 in FIG. 3, the amount of unbalance can be easily increased.

Although a large-capacity capacitor is used as the power storage means 5 in this embodiment, any power source that can be charged may be used. For example, rechargeable lithium batteries, solid electrolyte batteries, and the like have recently been put into practical use, and these batteries themselves have a large capacity and are highly reliable over a long period of time, making them suitable power sources for the present invention.

Silver batteries can also be used as a means of storing electricity, although there are some problems with their long-term reliability.

Furthermore, although the configuration from the control circuit after the power storage means to the pointer which is the display means in FIG. 1 is shown as an example of a needle display, the display means may be a digital display such as a CD or the like instead of the hands. [Effect] As described above, according to the present invention, one backflow prevention element 1
It can be rectified without reducing charging efficiency, and since there is only one element, it is extremely space efficient, low in cost, and highly reliable.

Also, by placing this backflow prevention element for rectification between the overcharge prevention means and the power generation means, it eliminates the negative effects of high voltage during current cut, which is one of the drawbacks of half-wave rectification, and contributes to improving charging efficiency. There is. Furthermore, by disposing this rectifying backflow prevention element between the power storage means and the power generation means, the power stored in the power storage means can be lost through the power generation means while the power generation means is not generating power. is completed.

The invention thus makes possible a very efficient and simple commutation, and therefore also for the first time a watch with a built-in generator.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

122. Block diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 2. Power generation mechanism diagram of the knee embodiment. Fig. 3. Cross-sectional view of the gear train part of the knee embodiment. Fig. 4: Explanatory diagram of a conventional rectifier circuit. Fig. 5. : Explanatory diagram of the charging circuit according to the present invention Figure 6: Accumulated current waveform diagram 1... Rotating means 2... Accelerating gear train 3... Starting 1! Mechanism 4... Rectifier circuit 5... Electric storage means and above

Claims (1)

[Claims] It has an alternating current power generation means, a rectification means, a power storage means, and an overcharge prevention means, and the rectification means is composed of one backflow prevention element, and the power generation means is provided between both the power storage means and the overcharge prevention means and the power generation means. , an electronic timepiece having a charging circuit including a backflow prevention element which is the rectifying means;