US 7,252,031 B2Granted

Cylinder apparatus

AssigneeKabushiki Kaisha Hitachi Seisakusho

InventorsHiroshi Nakamura, Yoshiaki Totani

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Abstract

In a cylinder apparatus such as a hydraulic shock absorber, a piston to which a piston rod is connected slidably is inserted into a cylinder which contains liquid oil. A rebound spring is wound around the piston rod with one end of the piston rod fixed to the piston rod using a spring holder. The rebound spring is slidably guided along the piston rod by means of another spring holder. A rebound stopper is fixed to the piston rod at a position between the spring holders. The rebound spring exerts a spring force opposite to the extension of the piston rod, thereby to moderate shock at the end of the stroke of the piston. Because the spring holder comes into contact with the rebound stopper, contact of adjacent linear portions of the rebound spring with each other due to excessive compression of the rebound spring can be prevented, and also occurrence of strange noise and damage of the rebound spring can be prevented.

Claims4

Dependent claims

A cylinder apparatus comprising a cylinder, a piston which is slidably inserted into said cylinder, and a piston rod which is connected to said piston at one end of the piston rod and extended outside of said cylinder at the other end,

said cylinder apparatus further comprising:
in said cylinder, a rebound spring having at one end a spring holder which is slidably guided along said piston rod, and whose other end is fixed to said piston rod so as to be compressed by an extending stroke of said piston rod;
and
a stopper unit which is fixed to said piston rod apart from said piston at a position between said spring holder and said piston, and adapted to come into contact with said spring holder before said rebound spring has been compressed to its state of maximum compression, thereby preventing further compression of said rebound spring,
wherein said spring holder has a bushing on its inner peripheral face, and said spring holder is slidably guided along said piston rod by way of said bushing.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.