Conventionally, various digital cameras have been put to practical use, which have an optical housing configured including a lens barrel unit having a plurality of optical lenses and the like, an image pickup unit including an image pickup device for subjecting an optical image of a photographic object formed by the optical lenses to photoelectric conversion, and the like.
As for these digital cameras, reduction of size of the whole device is always desired so that a user may always carry it with her/him and use it at ease at any place.
On the other hand, if a user always carries a digital camera, possibility increases that she/he, while carrying it, accidentally drops it or unexpectedly allows it to collide into a wall or the like, for example. However, since such a digital camera is an extremely precisely configured device, if external shock force is applied thereto, the external force can influence inner components, which can cause breakage or failure of the inner components.
Thus, as for conventional small size devices such as digital cameras, in order to cope with shock such as dropping, a variety of ones have been proposed configured with a floating structure such that inner components are configured to be movable in a device main body and a buffer member is provided between an outer surface of the movable inner components and an inner surface of the device main body, by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-258971, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-306078, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-80987, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-40503 and the like, for example.
In small size devices of such floating structure, when shock force by external force is applied to the exterior of the device main body, the shock force is absorbed by the buffer member being compressed.
The small size device disclosed by the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-258971 is a cellular phone or the like having a main body case which retains a camera unit and defines a contour, being configured with a buffer member provided in planes between a unit case and the main body case respectively along a direction of movement of lenses (optical axis direction; X-axis direction) and a direction perpendicular thereto (Y-axis direction) in order to alleviate shock force applied to the camera unit through the main body case.
The small size device disclosed by the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-306078 is a vehicle-mounted player apparatus installed in a dashboard in a vehicle interior, being configured with a buffer member interposed between an outer housing incorporated into the dashboard and an apparatus main body housed in the outer housing.
The small size devices disclosed by the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-80987 and the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-40503 are configured with a buffer member interposed between an outer surface of a slot portion removably housing a disk-shaped recording medium cartridge which is housed in a device main body and other inner components.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds