Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Nobuaki Ono

Kiichiro Nishina

Masahiro Itoh

Yasuo Sakurai

Hibiki Tatsuno

Akihisa Itabashi

Yasunobu Youda

Atsushi Takaura

Kazuya Miyagaki

Yoshinori Hayashi

Takao Yamaguchi

Tomohiro Nakajima

Toshio Kobayashi

Hiroshi Takemoto

Yoshifumi Sudoh

Kenichi Takanashi

Yoshihiro Morii

Tomoya Ohsugi

Jun Andoh

A document illuminating system includes a plurality of light emitting elements arranged in an array, a reflective element which guides light emitted from the light emitting elements to a document read area of a certain width and length. The reflective element includes first to third reflective portions. The second reflective portion includes one or more planar reflective faces and is disposed so that the reflective faces reflect light from the light emitting elements to one or both of the first and third reflective portions without other reflective elements. The first and third reflective portions each include one or more planar reflective faces and are disposed so that their reflective faces oppositely illuminate the document read area together by reflecting light from one or both of the light emitting elements and the second reflective portion to the document read area without other reflective elements.

Document illuminating system and image reader including the same

An optical reader which reads image information on an original document by moving to the original document includes an illumination unit having at least one light source arranged on a substrate and illuminating the original document, a plurality of mirrors reflecting reflection light from the original document, a focusing lens focusing the reflection light from the original document reflected by the mirrors, and a photoelectric conversion element arranged in a focusing position of the focusing lens, a normal direction of an emission surface of the light source and a normal direction of a light-receiving surface of the photoelectric conversion element are the same direction, an original document reading position is set near an end portion of the optical reader in the normal direction.

Optical reader, image reader and image forming device

An image reader feeds a document to read document information at a still position from below a glass platen. The image reader is configured to include a document feeder unit feeding a document in a predetermined direction, a glass platen provided below the document feeder unit, an illumination unit provided on or above the glass platen and including a surface light source which is long in a direction orthogonal to the predetermined direction and illuminates the document, and a document reader unit reading document information at a still position from below the glass platen. Such an image reader can illuminate documents efficiently with less electric power and achieve thinning of the illumination unit.

Image reader and image formation apparatus

The image read-out device comprises an integrally formed scanning optical unit in which a light source which emits light toward a document, a plurality of reflective mirrors reflecting the light which is emitted from the light source to the document and then reflected, an image forming lens converging the light reflected by a final reflective mirror which finally reflects the light, among the plurality of mirrors, and a light receiving sensor for receiving the light converged by the image forming lens are integrally mounted on a housing, the integrally formed scanning optical unit moving in a scanning direction and reading out an image of the document, wherein an opening is provided on each of top and bottom surfaces of the housing, and wherein the area of the opening provided on the bottom surface is equal or more than that of the opening provided on the top surface.

Image read-out device and image forming device

A lighting unit, includes: a light source section wherein a plurality of light-emitting sources are arranged in a direction perpendicular to a direction of each light-emitting optical axis of each light-emitting source and linearly at predetermined intervals; and a reflecting section which reflects light emitted toward a direction along a document mounting surface from the light source section arranged along the document mounting surface toward an irradiated region of the document mounting surface, the reflecting section having: a first reflecting surface disposed closer to the light source section than to the irradiated region; and a second reflecting surface disposed more distant from the light source section than from the irradiated region.

Lighting unit, image reading apparatus and image forming apparatus using the same

An image reading apparatus includes a plurality of light sources to illuminate a document; an illumination optical system to guide light to a reading target area having a length and a width; a document illuminating device to illuminate the entire document; an image forming optical system to form an image from light reflected from the document; and a sensor provided in an image forming section of the image forming optical system to read the image of the document. The illumination optical system includes a concentration section to control light diffusion, and a reflection section. The reflection section includes at least two integrally configured reflection surfaces, in which a sine value of an angle of reflected light from at least one reflection surface is positive, while a sine value of an angle of reflected light from the rest of at least one reflection surface is negative.

Image reading device and image forming apparatus

A first group optical system having a positive refracting power, a second group optical system having a negative refracting power, and a third group optical system having a positive refracting power are sequentially arranged from an object side toward an image side. At least the first group optical system and the third group optical system move so that a distance between the first group optical system and the second group optical system becomes minimum at short focal-length side, and a distance between the second group optical system and the third group optical system becomes minimum at long focal-length side. The third group optical system includes a triplet lens formed with a negative lens, a positive lens, and a negative lens.

Zoom lens, camera, and mobile information terminal

A coupling lens couples a beam emitted from a light source. A light deflector deflects the beam from the coupling lens at a uniform angular velocity. A line-image imaging optical system is disposed between the coupling lens and light deflector, and causes the beam to image a line image long along main scanning directions on or in the vicinity of a deflection reflective surface of the light deflector. A scanning and imaging optical system causes the beam deflected by the light deflector to image a beam spot on a medium to be scanned. In an optical housing, the light source, coupling lens, light deflector, line-image imaging optical system and scanning and imaging optical system are disposed, and contained. A plurality of holding and fixing locations are provided for holding and fixing a light-source part including the light source and coupling lens is provided in at least one of the light-source part and optical housing.

Optical scanning device and image forming apparatus

An optical scanner includes at least a pair of optical scanning systems and a light deflector used in common between the optical scanning systems, each optical scanning system having a scan lens for guiding the beam deflected from the light deflector onto the associated scanned plane. One of the optical scanning systems has a first reference reflecting position on the light deflector, and the other optical scanning system has a second reference reflecting position on the light deflector. The first and second reference reflecting positions are asymmetric with respect to the reference plane of the optical scanner. The scan lenses of said pair of optical scanning systems are arranged to be symmetric with respect to a line passing through the rotational center of the light deflector and extending in parallel to the scanned planes.

Optical scanner and image reproducing apparatus

An optical scanning device for scanning plural surfaces including a plurality of laser light units each configured to emit a laser beam, a deflecting device configured to deflect the laser beams from the plurality laser light units to sweep a plurality of predetermined planes, respectively, and a scanning image forming optical unit configured to project the laser beams deflected by the deflecting device on the plural surfaces, respectively, to scan the plural surfaces with the laser beams. The scanning image forming optical unit includes a plurality of optical detecting devices configured to detect the laser beams and a first plurality of reflecting devices positioned to reflect at least two laser beams of the laser beams toward one of the plurality of optical detecting devices.

Optical scanning device for scanning plural surfaces and image forming apparatus using the optical scanning device

An optical scanning apparatus includes light sources, an aperture having, and coupling lenses. Numbers of the light sources and the coupling lenses are equal to each other and the apparatus satisfies an inequality 12.7 &#x3c;(D&#xd7;&#x3b2;&#xd7;m&#xd7;xdpi)/(2&#xd7;NA) &#x3c;38.1 and an equation &#x3b2;=(&#x3b2;&#x2212;&#x3b2;)/(n&#x2212;1), wherein D represents a width of the slit of the aperture, &#x3b2;represents a beam open angle, mo represents a total lateral magnification ratio, dpi represents a number of dots per inch, NA represents a numerical aperture, &#x3b2;represents a positive open angle, &#x3b2;represents a negative open angle, and n represents the number. Further, an image forming apparatus using this optical scanning apparatus and an image forming method are provided.

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Yokohama, Japan

Nobuaki Ono