The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 24, 1979
Filed:
Mar. 02, 1977
Thomas E Roberts, Jr, Saratoga, CA (US);
James L Wiederrich, Lodi, CA (US);
Melvin H Lill, San Jose, CA (US);
Andrew K Chang, Malibu, CA (US);
FMC Corporaton, San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A light projector mounted on a front wheel of a vehicle uses a single laser to develop a beam which is split into a pair of light beams. The first light beam is projected to a calibrated mirror mounted on an adjacent rear wheel and is reflected to a target mounted near the projector on the front wheel of the vehicle so that the front wheel may be aligned with the rear wheel. The second light beam is projected to a mirror mounted on the other front wheel and is reflected to a target mounted adjacent the projector to check the toe of the front wheels. The target comprises a multichannel encoder which develops a plurality of Gray-coded binary signals in response to the position of the return beam. A rotating prism causes the light beams to sweep repetitively in a vertical plane so that the beams will strike the mirrors and the targets even when the projector is not mounted in a level position. A second prism may be moved into position to intercept the light beams and deflect them a predetermined angular amount so that the apparatus may be calibrated to correct for different spacings between the front wheels of the vehicles being checked.