Patent · US Expired

Multi-beam optical apparatus and image forming apparatus having the same

US6301021A · kind A · utility

6Cited by
6References
23Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateJul 20, 1998
Grant dateOct 9, 2001
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 20, 2018

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04N1/506
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A light exposure device for a color copier has a plurality of laser light sources for emitting laser beams on the basis of image signals of separated colors. These laser beams are continuously deflected by a polygon mirror to allow the surfaces of the photosensitive drums which are provided correspondingly to the respective light sources to be scanned with the laser beams. Through the scanning of the laser beams by the polygon mirror, electrostatic latent images corresponding to the respective colors are formed on the surfaces of the photosensitive drums. At this time, a portion of a laser beam emitted from a reference light source is received by a light receiving element and, by doing so, a sync signal is obtained. Based on the sync signal it is possible to control write timings of the laser beams emitted from the laser beam sources. Further, register patterns output onto a transfer belt at that time are read out by an image sensor so that a shift relative to the patterns is detected and, by doing so, the write timings of the laser beams are so corrected as to bring the relative shift to zero.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.