WO2005060116A2

WO2005060116A2 - Housing assembly for an electronic device

Info

Publication number: WO2005060116A2
Application number: PCT/EP2004/013074
Authority: WO
Inventors: Qing Hua Li; Michael Chan; Lap Fung Leung; Inez Ng; Kam Fung
Original assignee: Thomson Licensing
Priority date: 2003-12-18
Filing date: 2004-11-18
Publication date: 2005-06-30
Also published as: WO2005060116A3

Abstract

A housing assembly for an electronic device comprises a hous-ing (1) in which an aperture for inserting a removable element is formed, and a lid (4) for said aperture which is slidable between open and closed positions, the lid (4) and the housing (1) having releasably cooperating detents (8, 21) for locking the lid (4) in its closed position, wherein the detent (21) of the lid (4) is formed at an edge (22) thereof and the detent (8) of the housing (1) is urged into cooperation with the de-tent (21, 30) of the lid (4) by at least one leaf-type spring (10a, 10b) that extends along said edge (29) and is flexible in a direction perpendicular to said edge (29) and to the sliding direction of the lid (4).

Description

Housing assembly for an electronic device

The present invention relates to a housing assembly for an electronic device, which comprises a housing, in which an aperture for inserting a removable element is formed, and a lid for said aperture, which is slidable between open and closed positions.

Such housing assemblies are used for a wide variety of electronic devices, e.g. mobile phones, remote controls for electronic appliances, cassette recorders or MP3-players, and many more. Especially in the case of portable devices the removable element is primarily a removable power source. However, the removable element might likewise be a memory such as a storage card or a hard disk, earphones or other accessories.

Conventionally, housing and lid of such an assembly have re- leasably cooperating detents for locking the lid in its closed position. A detent of the lid may e.g. be formed by a boss at the end of a blade that projects Beyond an edge of the lid, the boss being designed to engage a recess at an inner side of a wall of the housing that extends in prolongation of the lid. An edge of the recess thus forms a detent of the housing that cooperates with the detent of the lid and locks the lid in its closed position. In order to open the lid, the detents must be disengaged by elastically bending the blade. The blade thus functions as a kind of leaf spring.

In order to keep such a housing compact, the length of the blade is in most cases reduced to not more than a few millimetres, and, accordingly, the detents cannot be higher than a fraction of a millimetre, either. The small dimensions of the detents cause these to be worn rather quickly, so that after a prolonged period of use of the device, the detents may be too worn out to lock the lid reliably, or the blade may break.

The object of the present invention is, therefore, to provide a housing assembly for an electronic device that can be made compact and, at the same time, will stand a prolonged period of use without wearing out.

The object of the invention is achieved, according to claim 1, by a housing assembly comprising a housing in which an aperture for inserting a removable element is formed, and a lid for said aperture, which is slidable between open and closed positions, the lid and housing having releasably cooperating detents for locking the lid in its closed position, wherein the detent of the lid is formed at an edge thereof and the detent of the housing is urged into cooperation with the detent of the lid by at least one leaf-type spring that extends along said edge and is flexible in a direction perpendicular to said edge and to the sliding direction of the lid.

By having the leaf-type spring extending along the edge of the lid, the length which this spring may have is limited only by the length of said edge, thus allowing for a large stroke of the spring and, in consequence, for a large detent that will stand a long time of use before becoming worn out.

According to a preferred embodiment, one of the housing and the lid has an L-shaped groove, a first branch of the groove being parallel to the sliding direction of the lid and the second branch being perpendicular thereto, and the other has a projection which in the closed position of the lid engages said first branch and, in the open position, is at the intersection of said two branches. While the projection engages the first branch of the groove, it is not possible to lift the lid off the aperture of the housing assembly. In the open position, however, the lid can be lifted off, because the projection may then pass through the second branch of the L-shaped groove.

Advantageously, an unlocking spring urges said lid from its closed position to its open position. Thus, the lid will automatically be pushed into its open position by said unlocking spring, as soon as a user disengages the two detents.

According to a first embodiment of the invention, a spring- loaded button is mounted on the lid and, when depressed against the load of its spring, displaces the detent of the housing so as to disengage it from the detent of the lid.

This is particularly practical in case of the removable element being a power source comprising a plurality of cylindrical elements, because in this case, the spring-loaded button may be located on the lid so as to engage a space between two of said cylindrical elements when depressed.

The detent of the housing may be formed in a locking member, which is slidably guided in rails of said housing so as to slide the detent of the housing into or out of engagement with that of the lid.

Preferably, said locking member may be integrally formed with said at least one leaf-type spring.

Still more preferably, there may be at least two of said leaf- type springs, which are symmetric with respect to a plane of reflection symmetry of the locking element. In a particularly preferred embodiment, said at least two leaf-type springs are connected to form a loop.

In another embodiment of the invention, the edges of the lid and of the housing at which the detents are formed extend in the sliding direction of the lid. A button for releasing the detents may be placed in an opening of said housing adjacent to said edge, so as to act directly on the leaf-type spring.

Preferably, a pre-assembled lid operating unit is mounted in the housing, which comprises a base for fixing to the housing, the at least one leaf-type spring and the detent of the housing borne by said spring, and a button, which, when depressed, displaces the detent of the housing so as to disengage it from the detent of the lid. The button is preferably connected to the base by a spring that urges the button against the housing from inside. The unlocking spring mentioned above may also be part of said lid operating unit.

Further features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent description of specific embodiments and the drawings to which it refers.

Fig. 1 is a perspective view of a housing for an MP3 player according to the present invention;

Fig. 2 is a perspective view of the MP3 player with the battery compartment lid removed;

Fig. 3 is a partial section of the housing in a plane defined by lines A, B in Fig. 2; Fig. 4 is a perspective view of a locking member for locking together the housing and the battery compartment lid;

Fig. 5 is an enlarged view of the housing and the lid, with part of the lid cut away;

Fig. 6 is an exploded view of the housing assembly of Fig. 1;

Fig. 7 is a side view of a housing assembly according to a second embodiment of the invention;

Fig. 8 is a top view of the housing assembly of Fig. 6;

Fig. 9 is a side view of the lid of the assembly of Figs. 6, 7;

Fig. 10 is a front view of said lid;

Fig. 11 is a perspective partial view of the housing assembly of the embodiment of Figs. 6 and 7, wherein the housing and the lid are partly cut away in order to show a lid operating unit; and

Fig. 12 is a detailed, partly exploded view in perspective of the lid operating unit.

Fig. 1 is a perspective view of an electronic device, incidentally an MP3 player, according to a first embodiment of the invention. The assembly comprises a housing 1 having a flattened ovoid shape, which is extremely compact and completely free of any acute angles and is therefore very convenient to carry in a trouser pocket. As can be seen in Fig. 2, in a central region of the housing 1, there is an aperture 2 of a battery compartment that holds two batteries 3 arranged alongside each other. In Fig. 1, the aperture 2 is closed by battery compartment lid 4, briefly referred to as lid 4 in the following. Aperture 2 and lid 4 extend almost over the entire length of housing 1.

A push-button 5 is located in a small hole 6 of lid 4. When the lid 4 is closed, the push-button 5 is directly above a locking member 7 shown in detail in Fig. 4. The locking member 7 is generally plate-shaped and is integrally formed of plastic material. It has two detents 8 at an upper edge thereof which, when installed, face the inner side of lid 4. At the inner side of lid 4, there are two ribs 21 in immediate vicinity of front edge 22 of the lid, at either side of hole 6, shown in section in Fig. 3, which in a closed position of the lid 4 engage the rear sides of detents 8 and thus lock the lid 4 in its closed position.

At a bottom edge of locking member 7, an elastic ring 9 is integrally formed. This ring 9 may be thought of as two leaf springs 10a, 10b, the bases of which are integrally connected to the locking member 7, and the remote ends of which are integrally connected to each other at a symmetry plane M.

As can be seen in Fig. 2, the locking member 7 is inserted in a narrow chamber formed between a front wall 11 of housing 1 and a partition wall 12. The partition wall 12 has undercut slots in which metal contact plates for contacting the batteries 3 are received. Since the springs 10a, 10b extend in a plane which is parallel to front wall 11 and immediately adjacent to it, the locking member 7 adds little to the overall length of the housing 1, although the springs may have a considerable length (in the present case, approximately the diameter of a battery) , so that a large stroke of locking member is achieved.

At the inner side of front wall 11, there are two narrow slots engaged by ribs 14 of locking member 7 which guide the locking member 7 vertically and keep it from tilting and getting stuck in its chamber.

At the lateral edges of locking member 7, resilient hooks 15 are formed. Upper tips 16 of these hooks act as detents that will engage matching detents, not shown, at the narrow sides of the locking member chamber and thus prevent the locking member 7 from falling out of the chamber and getting lost.

Between the two detents 8 at the upper edge of locking member 7, there is a notch 17, which, as can be seen from Fig. 5, is engaged by a bottom side of push-button 5. As can be recognized from Fig. 6, the push-button 5 is integrally formed with a flat blade 18. At an end of blade 18, which is remote from push-button 5, holes 19 are formed for resiliently fixing push-button 5 to an inner side of lid 4 by any appropriate means such as screws or rivets, which may in particular be formed injection molding lid 4 onto blade 18.

Since the battery compartment holds two batteries 3 and the push-button 5 and blade 18 are placed above a space between the two batteries, it is always possible to displace the pushbutton 5 and the blade 18 into the battery compartment without being blocked by any of the batteries. When a user presses push-button 5, locking member 7 is pressed downward into its chamber, whereby the ring 9 is resiliently compressed. The detents 8 of locking member 7 disengage from the above mentioned detents formed at the inner side of lid 4, whereby the lid 4 can be freely displaced along guide rails 20 (see Fig. 2) formed at the longitudinal edges of aperture 2, until lid 4 and housing 1 come apart and the lid 4 can be lifted off.

It should be noted that the lid 4 of this embodiment may be unlocked with a single hand, by supporting the bottom side of housing 1 with four fingers and depressing push-button 5 and then displacing lid 4 along the guides 20 by the thumb.

A second embodiment of a housing assembly according to the invention is shown in side and top views in Figs. 7 and 8, respectively. Again, the housing 1 has an overall flattened ovoid shape, with an operating panel 25 with operating keys 26 located at narrow sides of the housing 1 between two shells, referred to as upper shell la and lower shell lb, of housing 1 and a battery compartment lid 4 located centrally in a broad side of upper shell la and extending along almost the entire length thereof.

According to this embodiment, the battery compartment holds a single cylindrical battery. At a first side of the lid 4, an earphone jack 27 is provided in upper shell la. At the other side of lid 4, there is a cover 28 for a digital port for downloading data to the P3 player and a push-button 5 for unlocking lid 4. Before the mechanism for locking and unlocking the lid 4 of this embodiment is explained, the structure of the lid will be illustrated by means of Figs. 9 and 10.

The shape of the lid 4 is approximately semi-cylindrical, with reinforced longitudinal edges 29. At a bottom side of one of said edges 29, a recess 30 is formed. At lateral sides 34 of the edges 29, a plurality of L-shaped grooves 31 is formed, each of which has a branch 32 extending in the sliding direction of lid 4 and a branch 33, which is perpendicular to branch 32 and extends to the bottom side. When the lid 4 is closed, its bottom side 35 and lateral sides 34 are in contact with mating surfaces of upper shell la of housing 1. In the surfaces that face the lateral sides 34 of lid 4, there are projections 46 (see Fig. 11) that can be brought to engage the branches 32, so that the lid 4 cannot be lifted off.

In the perspective view of Fig. 11, only a small portion of lid 4 is shown; most of it and also part of housing 1 is cut away in order to show a lid operating unit, which will be described in detail referring to Figs. 11 and 12. The lid operating unit comprises a base member or holder 36 made of plastic which is fixed to the housing 1, e.g. by screws, not shown. A leaf spring 37 is integrally formed with said base plate 36 and has a detent 38 extending from a free end thereof. The detent 38 is shaped and located so as to fit into recess 30 when the lid 4 is in its closed position.

The leaf spring 37 has a flat portion 39 which is generally parallel to the surface of base plate 36 and is held a few millimetres above the surface of the base plate 36 by an inclined portion 40. The flat portion 39 extends not only below the bottom side 35 of lid 4 in which the recess 30 is formed, but also below a hole in housing 1, not shown in Fig. 11, in which push-button 5 is received.

The push-button 5 is integrally formed with two resilient arms 41 (see also Fig. 12) , each of which has a ring formed at its remote end which is stuck onto a pin 42 projecting from base plate 36. When the lid operating unit is mounted in housing 1, the arms 41 press push-button 5 against the inner side of upper shell la, so that a central portion of push-button 5 projects through the hole of housing 1, and a rim surrounding the central portion is withheld at an inner side of the edge of said hole.

The base plate 36 further has a metal leaf spring 43 of hairpin-like shape mounted to it. In the configuration of Fig. 11 a free end 44 of spring 43 resiliently urges against a vertical abutment edge 45 of shell la, adjacent to one of above- mentioned projections 46 for engaging the grooves 31.

The process of installation of the lid 4 is as follows. At first, the lid 4 is approached to the housing 1 from above, so that the projections 46 come to engage the vertical branches 33 of grooves 31. When the projections 46 are at the intersection of branches 32, 33, the free end 44 of spring 43 faces a vertical abutment surface 47 formed at the bottom side 35 of lid 4. Now, the lid 4 is pushed in the direction of branches 32. Thereby, abutment surface 45 comes into contact with spring 43 and bends its free end 44 towards bottom plate 36. At the same time, spring 37 is deflected downward by the bottom side 35 of lid 4 sliding along inclined upper side 48 of detent 38. When the lid 4 has reached is closed position, the detent 38 is facing recess 30 and engages it, whereby the lid 4 is locked in its closed position. In order to open the lid 4, the user presses push-button 5, whereby the bottom side of push-button 5 comes into contact with the flat portion 39 of spring 38 and urges it downward. Thus, the detent 38 is withdrawn from recess 30, and metal leaf spring 43 displaces lid 4 into its open position, in which the projections 44 are again at the intersection of branches 32, 33, and the lid 4 may be lifted off.

Claims

1. Housing assembly for an electronic device, comprising a housing (1) in which an aperture (2) for inserting a removable element is formed, and a lid (4) for said aperture (2) which is slidable between open and closed positions, the lid (4) and the housing (1) having releasably cooperating detents (8, 21, 30, 38) for locking the lid (4) in its closed position, wherein the detent (21, 30) of the lid (4) is formed at an edge (22, 29) thereof and the detent (8, 38) of the housing (1) is urged into cooperation with the detent (21, 30) of the lid (4) by at least one leaf-type spring (10a, 10b; 37) that extends along said edge (29) and is flexible in a direction perpendicular to it and to the sliding direction of the lid (4) .

2. The housing assembly of claim 1, wherein one of the housing (1) and the lid (4) has an L-shaped groove (31), a first branch (32) of the groove (31) being parallel to the sliding direction of the lid (4) and the second branch (33) being perpendicular thereto, and the other has a projection (46) which in the closed position of the lid (4) engages said first branch (32) and, in the open position, is at the intersection of said two branches (32, 33) .

3. The housing assembly of claim 2, wherein an unlocking spring (43) urges said lid (4) from its closed position to its open position.

4. The housing assembly of claim 1, 2 or 3, wherein a spring- loaded button (5) is mounted on the lid (4), which, when depressed against the load of its spring (10a, 10b; 37, 41), displaces the detent (8, 38) of the housing (1) so as to disengage it from the detent (21, 30) of the lid (4) .

5. The housing assembly of claim 4, wherein the removable element is a power source including a plurality of cylindrical elements (3) , and the spring-loaded button (5) is located on the lid (4) so as to engage a space between two of said cylindrical elements (3) when depressed.

6. The housing assembly of one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the detent (8) of the housing (1) is formed in a locking member (7) , which is slidably guided in rails of said housing (1⁾.

7. The housing assembly of claim 6, wherein the locking member (7) is integrally formed with said at least one leaf- type spring (10a, 10b) .

8. The housing assembly of claim 6 or 7, wherein the locking element (7) has a plane of reflection symmetry (M) , and at least two of said leaf-type springs (10a, 10b) are symmetric with respect to said same plane (M) .

9. The housing assembly of claim 8, wherein said at least two leaf-type springs (10a, 10b) are connected to form a loop (9) -

10. The housing assembly of claim 1, 2 or 3, wherein an edge (29) of the lid (4) and of the housing (1) at which said detents (30, 38) are formed extends in the sliding direction of the lid (4) .

11. The housing assembly of claim 10, wherein a button (5) for releasing the detents (30, 38) is placed in an opening of said housing (1) adjacent to said edge (29) .

12. The housing assembly of claim 10 or 11, wherein a pre- assembled lid operating unit is mounted in the housing (1) , which unit comprises a base (36) for fixing to the housing (1), the at least one leaf-type spring (37) and the detent (38) of the housing (1) borne by it, and a button (5) which, when depressed, displaces the detent (38) of the housing (1) so as to disengage it from the detent (30) of the lid (4) .

13. The housing assembly of claim 12, wherein the button (5) is connected to the base (36) by a spring (41) that urges the button (5) against the housing (1) from inside.

14. The housing assembly of claim 3 and claim 12 or 13, wherein the unlocking spring (43) is part of said lid operating unit.