Kabushikikaisha Kenwood

Takahiro Asano

Takafumi Suwa

Atuomi Ono

Masato Yamamoto

Shoji Tomioka

Teruaki Imai

Hisanori Togawa

Yasushi Kuroda

A transport mechanism for an optical disc cartridge capable of discharging an optical disc cartridge to a predetermined position by making a transport roller in pressure contact with the optical disc cartridge even if the cartridge is erroneously inserted. A guide arm is rotatively mounted which projects into an optical disc cartridge transport path between the transport roller and a disc insertion port. If the optical disc cartridge is inserted in a normal orientation, the guide arm is rotated by the optical disc cartridge to rotate the arm in the clockwise direction to allow the optical disc cartridge to be inserted, whereas if the optical disc cartridge is inserted in an orientation rotated by 90&deg; from the normal orientation, the transport roller is made in pressure contact with the side wall of the optical disc cartridge.

Transport mechanism for optical disc cartridge

A cartridge chucking apparatus capable of stably and correctly restricting the position of a cartridge with an improved reliability and precision. A cartridge is provided with a circle hole and an elongated hole as reference holes for restricting an in-plane position of the cartridge. The cartridge chucking apparatus has: a loading chassis having projections for holding the cartridge and restricting the position in the height direction and support shafts for supporting the loading chassis while it is raised or lowered; a base chassis having reference planes for squeezing the cartridge with the projections at a recording/reproducing position of the loading chassis to restrict the position in the height direction and positioning pins formed on the reference planes for being inserted into the reference holes to restrict an in-plane position of the cartridge; and elastic members for energizing the loading chassis so that first the positioning pin is inserted into the circle hole of the cartridge.

Apparatus for chucking a cartridge having a position restricting mechanism

Growing community of inventors

Hachiouji, Japan

Takahiro Asano