Kabushiki Kaisha Tokai Rika Denki Seisakusho

Seiji Hori

Tomonori Nagata

Keisuke Imai

Keiichi Kato

Sumikazu Sasaki

Akira Sumiyashiki

Katsuki Asagiri

Yasuho Kitazawa

Seiji Nishide

Tatsuo Yamashita

Takahiko Fukuyama

Masaru Ukita

Kenji Matsui

Kazuyoshi Ishiguro

Yoshiaki Maekubo

Motoki Sugiyama

Tetsushi Muromachi

Yoshikazu Hayashi

Toshio Saito

Toshiki Akita

Keiichi Katoh

Yoshio Umezawa

Tomohiro Okuhira

Yasunori Murayama

Naohiro Tsukiyama

Yoshihiro Ota

Minoru Abe

Naoki Urakawa

Satosi Kozawa

A tongue for a seat belt device is provided with a tongue main body that is insertable within a buckle, and a train-around portion through which an intermediate portion of a webbing is inserted. The train-around portion includes a first shaft is fixedly mounted between a pair of opposing walls, and a second shaft that is movably mounted between the walls. The webbing is slidably bent 180&#xb0; around the first fixed shaft. When tension of the webbing exceeds a predetermined magnitude or greater, the movable second shaft engages the webbing and increases a bending angle of the webbing around the first shaft to an angle greater than 180&#xb0; thereby increasing frictional resistance between the webbing and the train-around portion.

Tongue for seat belt device, and seat belt device

Assembling performance of a torsion bar to a spool is improved. When a webbing take-up device is assembled, the torsion bar is inserted into the spool while catch projections of a serration pillar of the torsion bar are corresponded to insertion grooves of an insertion hole of the spool. Subsequently, in a state where the serration pillar of the torsion bar arrives at an catch hole of the spool, the torsion bar is rotated in a winding direction with respect to the spool, so that the catch projections are caught by catch surfaces of catch grooves of the catch hole, whereby the torsion bar is made non-removable from the spool. Therefore, a direction in which the torsion bar is assembled to the spool is made to be only an axial direction of the spool, and assembling performance of the torsion bar to the spool can be improved.

Webbing take-up device

In the present pretensioner, press contact portions are formed further to a side of an open end of a packing housing section than central portions of opposing faces along a depth direction of the packing housing section. Accordingly, when a packing is being fitted into the packing housing section, no great resistance is imparted to a curved face side of the packing from a press contact wall of a housing section body and the opposing face, and the packing is fitted comparatively smoothly therein. Consequently, even when fitting the packing into the packing housing section, a packing main body is largely resilient-deformed, such that a large collapse in a through hole can be prevented, and the sealing ability of the seal due to deformation of the packing main body can be effectively enhanced.

Pretensioner

In a webbing retractor, a wire is inserted through a through-hole of a spool on which a webbing is taken-up and from which the webbing is pulled-out. At an initial stage of a process of absorbing inertial energy of a vehicle occupant, a large force limiter load is generated by adding a rubbing force of the wire at a peripheral portion of the through-hole, to a twisting load of a torsion bar. An energy absorption amount is made large, and an amount of pulling-out of the webbing is kept low. After a predetermined amount of energy has been absorbed, when the wire is completely pulled-out from the through-hole, the rubbing force of the wire is cancelled, the force limiter load is reduced, and force applied to the vehicle occupant via the webbing is reduced.

Webbing retractor and method of retracting webbing

An object of the present invention is to obtain an acceleration sensor that can reliably detect acceleration when inclination of an inclining member is within a fixed range, and that can reduce unnecessary movement of relevant members when inclination of the inclining member is outside of the range, so that space efficiency in an inner portion is high. In the present invention, a gear of a fixed gear fixed at a seat cushion is formed in only a portion in the circumferential direction, and a portion at which the gear is not formed is a sliding surface. One of teeth among a plurality of teeth of a pinion of a revolving gear is short, to form a notched tooth portion. In a state in which the forward-collapsed angle of a seatback exceeds a predetermined angle, the notched tooth portion faces the sliding surface and the revolving gear body no longer rotates. At this time, since a bracket at which a sensor ball is mounted also does not rotate, the bracket is held at a fixed position relative to a frame plate. Accordingly, a space formed in frame plates in consideration of rotation of the bracket does not need to be large, and space efficiency is high.

Acceleration sensor

There is provided a pretensioner which can as a whole be made smaller. A rack and pinion type pretensioner is disposed outside a second leg plate of a webbing take-up device. A driving mechanism of the pretensioner includes, as principal components, a piston formed as a rack bar, and a pinion. The pinion includes a toothed portion and a clutch portion, and is directly connected to a winding shaft. Accordingly, as compared with a conventional system in which intermediate gears are disposed between the pinion and the rack bar, the pretensioner can as a whole be made smaller both in radial and axial directions thereof.

In a pretensioner, an axial direction of a generator accommodating portion is inclined from a direction which is orthogonal to an axial direction of the cylinder main body toward the cylinder main body. As a result, another axial direction end portion of the generator accommodating portion is positioned closer to the cylinder main body side and the dimensions of the pretensioner along the orthogonal axial direction of the cylinder main body becomes small. In addition, at a bottom portion side of the cylinder main body, an open space is generated along the orthogonal direction of the cylinder main body and therefore the pretensioner becomes more compact. Moreover, since the generator accommodating portion and the cylinder main body are connected such that a center axis of the generator accommodating portion is skewed with respect to the center axis of the cylinder main body, a large area can be secured for the opening into the cylinder main body while a compact structure is maintained.

An inexpensive webbing retractor is obtained by making a pretensioner and a lock device small and reducing the number of parts. A plurality of protrusions are formed on an inner peripheral portion of the bearing body, which pivotally supports a clutch portion. These protrusions are brought into linear contact with an outer peripheral portion of the clutch portion, whereby the bearing body pivotally supports the clutch portion indirectly via the protrusions. Since the protrusions are brought into linear contact with the clutch portion, the contact area becomes quite small. Hence, the protrusions are easily plastically deformed due to friction resistance with the clutch portion. Therefore, resistance that obstructs the rotation of the clutch portion becomes small, and gas pressure can be efficiently supplied for the rotation of a take-up shaft. Also disclosed is a locking device comprising a lock base attached to the winding spool, a lock plate for engagement with ratchet teeth of a frame, and a lock cover which comprises a hook portion with which the lock base is engaged, and an outer peripheral flange portion overlapping the frame.

Webbing retractor

A gear mechanism and webbing retractor having a compact size in which a pinion is prevented from being damaged when a large initial driving force is applied from a gear. When a sensor detects an emergent deceleration of a vehicle, a piston driving device is actuated so as to move a rack at its standby position in a direction to a pinion. When the rack is located at the standby position, a tooth face on a side near a front end, of a front end tooth thereof is in contact with a pressure receiving surface of the initially driving member. The rack is moved along a pitch line in the direction to the pinion so that the front end tooth presses the pressure receiving surface. As a result, the initially driving member converts the initial driving force from the rack to a rotation force thereby rotating the pinion in the taking-up direction.

Gear mechanism and webbing retractor

In a pretensioner for a webbing retractor, an upper wall portion of a sealing member extends arcuately around an external periphery of a seal holding portion which is formed integrally with a bottom surface of a piston, and the sealing member includes a side wall portion proximate an inner wall of a cylinder. The sealing member is formed from an elastic material, and may be annular or a ring with an angle of 360 degrees or more. In an emergency state of a vehicle, when the piston is moved by gas pressure, the sealing member is pressed against the bottom surface of the piston by gas pressure, and a diameter of the sealing member is increased. Accordingly, the sealing member provides sealing between the piston and the inner wall of the cylinder.

Pretensioner for webbing retractor

A webbing winding device having a pre-tensioner for tensioning a webbing for restraining a passenger in a passenger restraining direction in an emergency deceleration of a vehicle, comprising a winding shaft to which an end of the webbing is fixed and a gear train mechanism comprising a plurality of gears arranged in such a manner that adjacent gears mesh with each other, wherein a driving gear which receives an external driving force when the pre-tensioner is actuated is driven from a starting end position to a terminating end, position which are set in advance, so as to rotate the winding shaft in a direction for retracting the webbing, and when a driving of the driving gear is completed, at least a pair of adjacent gears are separated so as to enable the winding shaft to be rotated in the direction for retracting the webbing by inertial force.

Webbing winding device

In a normal state, a roller is engaged with an engaging projection of a rotor constituting a pretensioner and is not nipped between the rotor and a shaft. Accordingly, the shaft is freely rotated and a spool is also freely rotated so that a webbing can be pulled out and wound up. When a vehicle suddenly decelerates, the rotor is rotated and the engaging projection is separated from the roller. Accordingly, the roller is pushed by a taper of the rotor and is nipped between an outer circumferential face of the shaft and the taper. Since the rotor and the shaft are connected to each other through the roller, the rotation force of the rotor is transmitted to the shaft and the spool is rotated and the webbing is wound. Accordingly, it is possible to provide a webbing winding device in which the rotation force of the pretensioner can be transmitted to the spool without causing resistance in the rotation of the pretensioner at its operating time or wasting the rotation force for rotating the spool.

Clutch mechanism and webbing winding device

A plurality of protrusions are formed on an inner peripheral portion of a bearing main body that supports a large diameter shaft portion of a take-up shaft. These protrusions are in line contact with an outer peripheral portion of the large diameter shaft portion, which allows the bearing main body to support the large diameter shaft portion indirectly via the protrusions. As the protrusions are in line contact with the large diameter shaft portion, the contact area is very small and the frictional resistance between the protrusions and the large diameter shaft portion causes the protrusions to undergo plastic deformation easily. Thus, the resistance that hinders the rotation of the large diameter shaft portion is decreased and a share that is served for the rotation of the take-up shaft by the pressure of gas is increased, thereby providing a webbing retractor that can serve efficiently for taking up a webbing belt.

A pretensioner for a webbing retractor is provided with a cylinder into which gas is supplied thereby moving a piston. A rack thus causes a pinion to rotate which causes a webbing to be wound onto a winding shaft. During the assembly process for the pretensioner, an O ring is fitted onto a seal holding portion of a piston and the O ring and piston are inserted together into a cylinder. Therefore, the conventional cutting process for forming a seal holding groove is unnecessary. In a normal state, the piston does not come into direct contact with the bottom portion of the cylinder, as in a conventional apparatus, instead the O ring abuts the bottom portion of the cylinder. Therefore, noise generated by the bottom of the cylinder coming into contact with the piston due to vibration and the like can be prevented.

A webbing retractor includes a spool around which a webbing is wound in such a manner as to be capable of being pulled out; an energy absorbing member which is deformed by the spool when a rotating force acting in a pulling-out direction of the webbing is applied to the spool at the time of a sudden deceleration of a vehicle, so as to prevent an increase in a tensile force of the webbing; a pretensioner which is connected to the spool when a deceleration of a predetermined value or more is applied, so as to rotate the spool in a taking-up direction of the webbing; and a canceling portion disposed between the spool and the pretensioner so as to cancel the stopping of rotation in a paying-out direction of the webbing by the pretensioner after operation of the pretensioner. Accordingly, after the operation of the pretensioner, the rotation of the spool in the pulling-out direction of the webbing is not restricted, and the energy absorption by the energy absorbing member is not restricted.

Growing community of inventors

Aichi-ken, Japan

Seiji Hori