High and low beam headlamp with a pivoting multifaceted reflector
OwnerXiaolu Chen, James M. Helmsinventors
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Abstract
A vehicle headlamp having a pivotal multifaceted reflector, a light source, and an actuator typically including a solenoid, the actuator disposed and coupled to the multifaceted reflector and to other portions of the headlamp so as to pivot, under the action of the actuator, into a first position to generate a first beam of light serving as a high beam, and into a second position to generate a second beam of light serving as a low beam, and so providing a high beam and a low beam using the same light source, fixed within the headlamp, and a single reflector. In some embodiments, the high beam meets FMVSS 108 requirements for a vehicle headlamp high beam, and the low beam meets FMVSS 108 requirements for a vehicle headlamp low beam.
Claims8
A headlamp, comprising:
- a housing (20) at least partially enclosing an interior space;
- a light source (24b) disposed within the interior space and attached to the housing;
- a hinge (42) having two sections pivotally connected by a bearing along a pivoting axis (40), and disposed within the interior space with one section attached to the housing (20);
- a multifaceted reflector (30) disposed within the interior space and attached to the other section of the hinge (42), whereby the multifaceted reflector is pivotally connected to the housing (20);
- and
- an actuator (28) coupled to the multifaceted reflector (30) and to the housing (20), and configured so as to respond to an applied voltage by pushing or pulling on the multifaceted reflector and so causing the multifaceted reflector to pivot about the pivoting axis (40) of the hinge (42) and thereby change the orientation of the multifaceted reflector (30) relative to the housing (20).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.