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AssigneeEastman Kodak Company
InventorsTomi Lahcanski, Eric P. Hochreiter, James M. Thomas, D. Mathew Dobbins
Estimating the term…
A clamping arrangement essentially comprising two lever arms driven at one end by a solenoid and having a resilient clamp pad mounted on a flexure member at the other end thereof. The clamp pad is made of a resilient material such as, for example, urethane and has four non-parallel side walls defining an upper face which is complementary to the radial face of the scanning apparatus gate. The sloping side walls of the clamp pad act as a light baffle to prevent reflected light from entering the imaging lens, and the pad is gimballed so that any variations between the upper surface of the clamp pad and the radial surface of the gate will be eliminated attain as perfect a match therebetween as is possible. In another embodiment of the clamping arrangement, a single arm can be utilized in place of the dual arm arrangement described above. The single arm has a Y-shape in which the clamp pad is supported on the branched end of the arm and the solenoid drives the single member. An additional clamp pad can be provided for clamping laminated paper attached to the film for a reprocessing order after the film itself has been clamped by the first-mentioned clamp pad against the gate in the area of the aperture.
A photographic film scanning apparatus, comprising a movable gate with an arcuate surface having an aperture therethrough and a clamping device movable with the gate, wherein the clamping device has at least one arm pivotally mounted at the gate, an actuator operatively associated with the at least one arm for pivoting the latter between a clamped position and an unclamped position, a flexure member carried at a first end of the at least one arm, and a resilient clamping pad mounted on the flexure member, wherein the resilient clamping pad has an upper surface sized to match a perimetrical region of the gate aperture and configured to match the arcuate surface of the gate so as to securely clamp an image on a photographic film between the clamping device and the gate and to maintain the film in a flat plane in a scanning direction.
A clamping device comprising at least one arm adapted to be pivotally mounted, a flexure member at a first end of at least one arm, a resilient clamping pad mounted on the flexure member, an actuator operatively associated with the arm for selectively moving the resilient clamping pad between a first unclamped position and a second clamped position, the resilient clamping pad being configured with non-parallel side walls, and upper surfaces of two opposed side walls having a predetermined arcuate configuration;
A method for clamping at least one of a photographic film and a laminate attached to photographic film in a scanning apparatus, comprising the steps of
A clamping device comprising at least one arm adapted to be pivotally mounted, a flexure member at a first end of at least one arm, a resilient clamping pad mounted on the flexure member, an actuator operatively associated with the arm for selectively moving the resilient clamping pad between a first unclamped position and a second clamped position, the resilient clamping pad being configured with non-parallel side walls, and upper surfaces of two opposed side walls having a predetermined arcuate configuration;
A clamping device comprising at least one arm adapted to be pivotally mounted, a flexure member at a first end of at least one arm, a resilient clamping pad mounted on the flexure member, an actuator including an electrically-operated solenoid operatively associated with another end of the arm for selectively moving the resilient clamping pad between a first unclamped position and a second clamped position, the resilient clamping pad being configured with non-parallel side walls, and upper surfaces of two opposed side walls having a predetermined arcuate configuration.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.