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US 5,348,404 AGranted
Split bushing mounting of a printer carriage with pre-load
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Company
InventorsAbdolreza Movaghar, W. Wistar Rhoads, Michael A. Nguyen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A molded plastic printer carriage mountable in the printer on a slider rod uses a pair of spaced sintered bronze bushings and a spring biased preload pad intermediate the bushings which engages the slider rod to compensate for and minimize rocking of the carriage during rapid movement thereof during printing without requiring expensively machined slider rods or close tolerance bushings.
Claims21
A printer carriage comprising:
- a plurality of print cartridge receptacles;
- a support system including a slider rod receptacle;
- a pair of bearings in said slider rod receptacle for supporting the carriage for sliding movement on at least one carriage support rod;
- said support system further comprising a carriage pre-load pad in said slider rod receptacle, said pad centrally positioned between said bearings and engageable with said support rod at a location between said pair of bearings;
- a spring supported on the carriage for biasing said pad into sliding engagement with said support rod;
- and
- wherein said spring comprises an elongate flat bar having a pair of ends bent toward one side of said bar, and said pad is mounted on the side of said bar opposite said bends and intermediate said ends.
4 more elements
A printer carriage comprising:
- a plurality of print cartridge receptacles;
- a support system including a slider rod receptacle;
- a pair of bearings in said slider rod receptacle for supporting the carriage for sliding movement on at least one carriage support rod;
- said support system further comprising a carriage pre-load pad in said slider rod receptacle, said pad centrally positioned between said bearings and engageable with said support rod at a location between said pair of bearings:
- a spring supported on the carriage for biasing said pad into sliding engagement with said support rod;
- and
- wherein each of said bearings comprise a busing housing in said slider rod receptacle and a split bushing in each housing, said housings and bushings having abutting walls for preventing axial and rotational movement of said bushings with respect to said carriage, with each split busing having a pair of diametrically opposite flat surfaces thereon extending axially to define a wall which contacts said housing to prevent axial movement of said bushing, said flat surfaces extending less than the full axial length of said bushings.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.