Alps Electric Co., Ltd.

Hideyasu Hayashi

Kazuo Aikawa

Hiroshi Ohara

A mounting structure is provided to mount, on the same circuit board, two types of electrical parts in each of which an operating member is rotatably supported by a housing including sliders and a conductive pattern, such as a contact pattern, and which are similar in arrangement of terminals to extend terminal-insertion holes of the circuit board. Each of the electrical parts has a positioning protrusion protruding from its bottom face, and the position of the positioning protrusion differs according to the type of the electrical part. In a mounting region of the circuit board for each electrical part, a positioning hole is provided in which only the positioning protrusion of the corresponding electrical part can be inserted. Preferably, the positioning protrusion protrudes from a bottom face of a bottom plate member attached at the bottom of the housing.

Electrical part prevented from improper mounting on circuit board, and mounting structure for the electrical part

Disclosed is an encoder including a rotary member and a fixed member. The fixed member is provided with an electrode having A-channel, B-channel and C-channel patterns, the rotary member is provided with contacts which are to be opposed to the electrode. A-C state switches from OFF to ON at each rotation of the rotary member for one click angle from a stable click position in both CW and CCW direction. During CW rotation for one click angle, B-C state remains unchanged from OFF; during CCW rotation for one click angle, B-C state switches twice between ON and OFF.

Encoder

An encoder includes a rotary member having a predetermined electrode pattern and a fixed member having multiple channel contacts which are opposed to the electrode. The rotary member has stable reference phases where at most one pair of the contacts is ON (in electrical contact) and at least another pair is OFF (not in electrical contact), i.e. both pairs may be OFF. When the rotary member is rotated clockwise or counter-clockwise from one reference phase, both pairs of contacts are temporarily on before reaching the adjacent reference phase. The pairs of contacts that are ON or OFF at the adjacent reference phase differ dependent on the direction of rotation. A counter is incremented or decremented according to the direction of rotation.

Growing community of inventors

Miyagi-ken, Japan

Hideyasu Hayashi