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AssigneeSeiko Epson Corporation
InventorsYujiro Nomura, Nozomu Inoue, Ryuta Koizumi, Ken Ikuma
Estimating the term…
A line head, includes: a substrate which is provided with a plurality of luminous element groups which respectively include a plurality of luminous elements in a first direction which emit light beams; a lens array which includes a plurality of imaging lenses which are provided corresponding to the plurality of luminous element groups; and a light shielding member which is disposed between the substrate and the lens array and includes a plurality of light guiding holes which correspond to the plurality of luminous element groups, wherein the lens array is away from the light shielding member, an inner diameter of each of the plurality of light guiding holes in the first direction is a first light guiding hole diameter, and a bore diameter of each of the plurality of imaging lenses in the first direction is a first lens diameter, and the first light guiding hole diameter is smaller than the first lens diameter.
A line head, comprising:
An image forming apparatus, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
About 1 year 8 months of term left · ends 4 Jul 2028 (estimated)
The disclosure of Japanese Patent Applications enumerated below including specification, drawings and claims is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety:
No. 2006-213302 filed Aug. 4, 2006;
No. 2006-271579 filed Oct. 3, 2006; and
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an embodiment of an image forming apparatus according to the invention.
FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an electrical construction of the image forming apparatus of FIG. 1 and the line head.
FIG. 3 is a perspective view schematically showing the line head.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an embodiment of an image forming apparatus and a line head as an exposure unit. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an electrical construction of the image forming apparatus of FIG. 1 and the line head.
The image forming apparatus 1 can selectively execute a color mode for forming a color image by superimposing four color toners of black (K), cyan (C), magenta (M) and yellow (Y) and a monochromatic mode for forming a monochromatic image using only black (K) toner. In FIG. 1, the image forming apparatus comprises a line head 29 for forming images corresponding to the respective colors. FIG. 1 is a diagram corresponding to the execution of the color mode.
In FIG. 2, in this image forming apparatus 1, when an image formation command is given from an external apparatus such as a host computer to a main controller MC having a CPU and memories, the main controller MC feeds a control signal and the like to an engine controller EC and feeds video data VD corresponding to the image formation command to a head controller HC. This head controller HC controls line heads 29 of the respective colors based on the video data VD from the main controller MC, a vertical synchronization signal Vsync from the engine controller EC and parameter values from the engine controller EC. In this way, an engine part EG performs a specified image forming operation to form an image corresponding to the image formation command on a sheet such as a copy sheet, transfer sheet, form sheet or transparent sheet for OHP.