Pioneer Corporation

Pioneer Electronic Corporation

Nobuo Ishida

Takahiro Kato

Kuniya Satomi

Kiyoshi Morikawa

Tomomichi Kimura

Jun Togashi

Tatsuya Yanagisawa

Takashi Ota

Hiroshi Akiyama

Yoshihumi Nakayama

Taichi Akiba

Hitoshi Furuhata

Tomotaka Nishimura

A supporting mechanism for movably supporting a member to be supported along a supporting shaft, comprises supporting members and a pressing device. The supporting members are provided on the member to be supported. Each of the supporting members comes into contact with the supporting shaft on at least two contact points so as to be movable on the supporting shaft. The at least two contact points are apart from each other. The pressing device presses the supporting members against the supporting shaft so that the contact points of each supporting member simultaneously come into contact with the supporting shaft.

Support mechanism and feeding unit including same

An optical pickup apparatus has a simplified configuration for using a plurality of laser beams at different wavelength to reduce the size, and a laser diode chip for use therewith. An irradiation light path for leading a laser beam emitted from a light emitter to a recording medium is provided with an optical axis correcting element for passing a first laser beam and for diffracting a second laser beam having a wavelength different from that of the first laser beam to generate diffracted light which has the optical axis substantially matching the optical axis of the first laser beam. The optical axis correcting element is arranged at a position at which the center of a light intensity distribution of the first laser beam incident thereto matches the center of a light intensity distribution of the second laser beam incident thereto.

Optical pickup apparatus an optical axis correcting element

A disk changer stably maintains a tray with a selected disk loaded thereon even if a physical impact or vibration is loaded from outside therein while the tray is being drawn out, the disk is being reproduced, or the tray is being retained. The disk changer has a retaining device which retains therein a plurality of trays each for loading a disk thereon at corresponding retaining positions parallel to each other in a horizontal state and also draws each tray out from the retaining position in the substantially horizontal direction, a guide member provided at a position corresponding to the retaining position, a tray moving mechanism engaging with a tray selected from the plurality of trays, causing the selected tray to engage with the guide member, and drawing out the selected tray partially or entirely from the retaining device in the substantially horizontal direction to move the tray to a position corresponding to the selected tray, a driving device which drives a disk on the selected tray drawn out to the drawing-out position, having a tray loading section for loading thereon the selected tray, and the guide member engages with the selected tray when the selected tray is drawn out by the tray moving mechanism, and elastically maintains the selected tray on a plane substantially identical to that of the corresponding retaining position collaborating with the retaining device and/or the tray loading section.

Disk changer with trays movable between retaining and drawn-out positions

A casing of a device has a pair of vertical side walls, and a plurality of vertically arranged optical discs. Each side wall has a vertical guide slit. A disc player has two pins projected from opposite sides. Elevation plates are horizontally slidably mounted on the vertical side walls at outsides thereof. Each of the elevation plates has a V-shaped guide slit comprising an upper diagonal slit and a lower diagonal slit. Each pin is slidably engaged with vertical guide slit and with the V-shaped guide slit so that disc player is held at a vertical position. The elevation plates are driven in a horizontal direction which is changed to an opposite direction at a joint between the upper diagonal slit and the lower diagonal slit. Thus, each of the pins is moved along the vertical guide slit and the V-shaped guide slit, so that the disc player is carried to a position corresponding an optical disc.

Device for carrying a disc player in an automatic disc changer

Growing community of inventors

Kawagoe, Japan

Nobuo Ishida