Trw Occupant Restraint Systems Gmbh

Rainer Bareiss

Thomas Kielwein

Jurgen Rink

A belt retractor for vehicle safety belts to secure a child's seats or loads on a vehicle seat comprises a belt drum rotatably mounted in a housing and a locking mechanism for preventing rotation of the belt drum. A tripping mechanism is also provided, which has a coupling disk connected with the belt drum and provided with external gear teeth. A pawl is able to be selectively pivoted between an engagement position with the external gear teeth of the coupling disk and a normal position out of engagement with such external gear teeth. A ring of gear teeth is driven by the belt drum and two gear wheels are in mesh with said ring of gear teeth. The gear wheels are rotatably mounted on the ends of a rocking member, which is pivotally mounted on the housing. An actuating arm is connected with the rocking member for the operation of the pawl. Switching elements are provided on the periphery of the gear wheels and of the ring of gear teeth and abut against one another in permanently set relative angular positions of the gear wheels and of the ring of gear teeth, the rocking member being pivoted thereby. The switching elements comprise at least one switching tooth projecting beyond the periphery of one of the ring of gear teeth and the gear wheels and a closed tooth gap on the other of the ring of gear teeth and the gear wheels.

Belt retractor for vehicle safety belts

For a sensor for the vehicle-sensitive triggering of the locking mechanism of a safety belt retractor in the back of a vehicle seat, with a ball seat (17) which has a trough (16) for accepting a sensor ball (15), and a pivotally mounted sensor lever (20) resting on the sensor ball (15), the amount of space required for pivoting the sensor in order to maintain the orientation of the sensor irrespective of the inclination of the seat back is to be reduced, without the distance between the tip at the free end of the sensor lever and the circumference of the control disk changing while the sensor is being pivoted. To this end, the sensor (10) is characterised by the ball seat (17) being pivotally mounted around an axis running through the center (C) of the sensor ball (15). In such an arrangement, only the ball seat, but not the entire sensor, is pivoted depending on the inclination of the seat back, which greatly reduces the amount of space required by the sensor; the distance between the tip of the sensor lever and the circumference of the control disk, however, remains unchanged.

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Alfdorf, Germany

Rainer Bareiss