Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Panasonic Corporation

Shigetaka Douzono

Yoshiharu Abe

Takefumi Inoue

Tetsuya Koma

Takayuki Ishikawa

Tetsuro Hanahara

Kouichi Santo

Kenji Otomo

Kazuhisa Fujita

Mikio Nishimura

A switch device includes a box-shaped case, a harness portion, and a fixing member. The harness portion is connected to a switch contact point and includes a plurality of lead lines extending out of the case. The case includes a holding body and a guide portion. The holding body includes a fixing portion protruding from an outer face of the case and provided on a tip side, and a through-hole provided under the fixing portion. The guide portion is opposed to the through-hole and formed in a substantially concave curve shape. The guide portion is formed such that an end portion further from the through-hole is positioned to be above an end portion closer to the through-hole. The fixing member extends through the through-hole and fixes the harness portion to the holding body by winding the harness portion and the fixing portion together.

Switch device

A lighting apparatus is configured by disposing an EL element inside a stationary housing including, about its top side, an operating part including a plurality of arranged push buttons as well as inside a movable housing openably mounted to the stationary housing and having a display part at its surface, and connecting a control circuit to the EL elements, the operating part and the display part. The control circuit controls light emission of the respective EL elements of the stationary housing and the movable housing to illuminate the operating part and the display part, so that the lighting apparatus simple in structure is capable of various illuminations.

Lighting apparatus

An EL element includes plural light-emitting regions for illuminating corresponding push buttons, and is disposed beneath the push buttons. The EL element is connected to a switching contact and a controller. An light-emitting operation of the EL element is controlled by the controller to illuminate a certain push button. The keyboard including the above components can provide multiple functions for illuminating the push buttons although having a simple structure.

Illumination type keyboard

A cup-shaped elastic member forces push button upwardly that has indication part A formed thereon. Light transmitting electrode layer B, light-emitting layer C, and back electrode layer E are sequentially formed on light transmitting sheet A to form EL element , and the EL element is disposed on the upper or lower face of membrane switch . This structure can provide an inexpensive illuminated keyboard switch that allows clear illumination of the push button and uses a smaller number of components.

Illuminated keyboard switch

An illumination type push button switch includes EL element mounted to a bottom surface of board below switch contact . Board has through-holes A and B near the contact. EL element , which is capable of lighting plural push buttons simultaneously by surface-light emission, emits light via through-holes A and B of board to light push buttons and . The illumination type push button switch thus lighting the push buttons clearly includes a small number of components and is inexpensive.

Growing community of inventors

Fukui, Japan

Shigetaka Douzono