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:
Oct. 01, 2013
Filed:
Sep. 02, 2011
Yuji Tanaka, Kanagawa, JP;
Yoichi Ito, Tokyo, JP;
Mitsuya Matsubara, Kanagawa, JP;
Ricoh Company, Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An image forming apparatus including: a carriage movable in a main scanning direction and including a recording head having a nozzle surface in which nozzles to eject liquid droplets in a horizontal direction are formed, the nozzle surface being disposed in a vertical direction; a guide shaft to guide the carriage in the main scanning direction; and a bearing provided to the carriage and having two sloped sides slidably contacting an outer circumferential surface of the guide shaft. In a plane perpendicular to an axis of the guide shaft, the two sloped sides are disposed such that a line passing through both the axis of the guide shaft and an intersection of two tangent lines from contact portions in which the two sloped sides contact the outer circumferential surface of the guide shaft diagonally intersects a line extending along a plane of the nozzle surface.