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:
Jul. 26, 1994
Filed:
Jun. 07, 1993
Brian G Rennex, Gaithersburg, MD (US);
Other;
Abstract
This invention relates to inchworm linear motors or piezoelectric linear actuators and in particular to designs which address difficulties associated with miniaturization, the primary one being that the clamping driver is typically oriented laterally to the drive direction and when the lateral dimension becomes very small there is not sufficient displacement of the clamping driver to allow a practical clamping. That is, the tolerance required for the device dimensions would then be prohibitively small. This problem is overcome by orienting the clamping drivers longitudinally, i.e. parallel, to the drive direction, thereby permitting the length of said clamping drivers to be significantly greater than for the prior art case of lateral orientation. An additional feature re-directs the longitudinal clamp-drive to a lateral direction for clamping of the driven element.