Belt driving device with steering roller
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsKoji Miyake, Satoru Hori, Yuji Aoshima, Kensuke Nakajima
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A belt driving device to drive an endless belt, includes a drive roller and a suspension roller which extend in a first direction and face each other in a second direction. The belt driving device includes a steering roller located between the drive roller and the suspension roller in a tiltable manner. A pulley (or wheel) is located at an end portion of the steering roller. The belt driving device includes a link mechanism which presses the end portion of the steering roller to tilt the steering roller with the movement of the pulley (or wheel).
Claims17
A belt driving device comprising:
- a drive roller to drive an endless belt;
- a suspension roller to rotate in a following manner with a rotational movement of the endless belt when the endless belt is wound on the suspension roller, wherein the drive roller and the suspension roller extend along a first direction and face each other along a second direction intersecting the first direction;
- a steering roller located between the drive roller and the suspension roller, the steering roller to rotate in a following manner with the rotational movement of the endless belt, wherein the steering roller extends in a longitudinal direction and comprises an end portion in the longitudinal direction, the end portion being movable along a third direction intersecting the first direction and the second direction, the steering roller to tilt when the end portion moves along the third direction;
- a wheel located at the end portion of the steering roller, the wheel protruding in a radial direction of the steering roller, the wheel to contact an edge portion of the endless belt in a width direction of the endless belt, wherein the wheel is movable along a rotational axis of the steering roller when the wheel is pressed via a shifting movement of the endless belt along the first direction to move in an axis line direction of the steering roller;
- and
- a link mechanism including a curved surface to contact the wheel in the first direction, the link mechanism to tilt the steering roller by moving the end portion of the steering roller inward in the third direction when the wheel is pressed to move outwardly in the first direction.
An image forming system comprising:
- a drive roller to drive an endless belt to rotate along an operational path;
- a suspension roller to rotatably support the endless belt;
- a steering roller located between the drive roller and the suspension roller to engage the endless belt, wherein the steering roller is tiltable to vary a tension of the endless belt;
- a wheel located at an end portion of the steering roller to engage an edge portion of the endless belt, the wheel being movable along the end portion of the steering roller in response to a shifting of the endless belt away from the operational path;
- and
- a link mechanism comprising a swing head coupled to the end portion of the steering roller adjacent the wheel, the swing head being pivotally mounted to a pivot base, to rotate when the wheel is biased against the swing head, wherein a rotation of the swing head moves the end portion of the steering roller away from the endless belt, causing the tension at the edge portion of the endless belt to be weakened, in order to bias the endless belt to shift back toward the operational path.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.