Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Tadayoshi Kasahara

Ryozo Hiraga

Tomomasa Nakano

Keijiro Nishida

Mitsuo Kakei

Ichiro Komatsubara

Masao Shimabayashi

An apparatus for continuously processing articles includes a pre-heating chamber for confining a vacuum therein provided with four openings by which an entrance chamber, two depositing chamber and an exit chamber communicate therewith individually. Each of the openings is provided with a gate valve mounted therein for covering the openings, and particularly the entrance and exit chambers serving to maintain the vacuum in the pre-heating chamber at a predetermined level while feeding unprocessed articles to and removing the processed articles from the pre-heating chamber in such a manner that the vacuum is not affected by the ambient atmosphere. The pre-heating chamber comprises a cylindrical housing in which a water-wheel-like conveyor having means for receiving and holding vacuum deposition jigs carrying articles such as optical elements is intermittently rotated to advance the vacuum deposition jigs through the pre-heating chamber. This feature of the invention facilitates reduction in the heating time per jig. In addition, the automatic inversion of the jig in half revolution of the conveyor serves to facilitate successive applications of a thin film coating on the opposite surfaces of the articles without breaking the vacuum in the processing chambers while insuring that each of the articles is treated identically to produce uniform properties of the thin film coating.

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Hino, Japan

Tadayoshi Kasahara