A muffler (101) for a vehicle, the muffler (101) having at least one first crumple feature (105) and at least one second crumple feature (107), the first and the second crumple features (105, 107) being configured to absorb the energy of an impact load to the muffler (101). The first crumple feature (105) is configured to deform at a first level of impact loading and the second crumple feature (107) is configured to deform at a second level of impact loading.

The muffler has a number of chambers which are generally formed from a combination of partitions and tubes. In order to function effectively, the chambers of the muffler must be configured to dissipate the acoustic energy of the exhaust gases without affecting engine performance. The muffler must also be sturdy enough to withstand the vibrations produced by the engine and the pressures of the exhaust gasses.
The position of the muffler on the vehicle varies considerably depending on the vehicle model, but most mufflers are located underneath and towards the rear of the vehicle. As such, the overall shape of the muffler is dependent upon package restriction of the vehicle's underbody. For example, the shape of the muffler may be determined by the configuration of the vehicle's chassis and the components of the drivetrain. Furthermore, the muffler must be built to resist corrosion caused by exposure to the environment underneath the vehicle, for example exposure to water and salt.
As a result of the design requirements of the muffler, the muffler may be a relatively rigid component. With ever-increasing requirements for crash safety, it is desirable to also provide a muffler that performs well in the event of a crash.


A framework for individually controlling the layout of display elements provides management of the layout automatically via pluggable policies. Control modules are dedicated to controlling the format of respective display elements. The control modules are organized into an ancestral hierarchy tree structure. Each parent control module specifies a policy object that manages the layout of its children, and provides measurement information to ancestor control modules. When an aspect of a control module changes that will affect its layout, it makes a single call which causes the framework to utilize the relevant layout managers to layout any affected control modules.

Typical graphic user interface (GUI) programming techniques are limited to statically and/or explicitly controlling the bounds of a display. The bounds, or limits, over which the display is controllable is often referred to as the display's layout. Static/explicit programming typically requires that specific values be used to define the boundaries of a display, and each time an update is to be made to the layout of the display, all the values need to be recalculated with explicit code. This adversely affects the implementation of scenarios in which the control bounds are to be dynamic, or at least appear dynamic to the user, because of the extensive amount of code required to manage this layout. This code is often burdensome to the programmer because of its complexity and because writing this code can be time consuming. This type of code can also adversely affect the user because the user may have to wait too long for the code to perform its function (i.e., to update the layout), thus negating the dynamic characteristic the code was designed to exhibit. These problems are exacerbated in situations where the potential exists for changes to the layout of one portion of a display to affect the layout of other portions of the display. These problems are also evident in situations in which an extensible model is desired. That is, in situations wherein developers can add new elements having their own dynamic layout, or use those provided by third parties.
Additionally, controls that are written to support dynamic adjustment of bounds are often error prone, and inefficient. An example of a scenario in which this type of code presents severe disadvantages is the increasingly common use of browser like interfaces to dynamically control the layout of a display. Browser-like interfaces extensively utilize text, localization (locale-specific text and images), and data-driven applications (dynamic updates and dynamic creation of user interfaces), and thus present many opportunities to make dynamic changes to the layout of display content. Existing techniques for enabling these dynamic changes suffer from the above-mentioned disadvantages of being error-prone, inefficient, and being difficult to implement.
Therefore, the ability to dynamically control the layout of displays without suffering the above disadvantages is desired.


An optically isotropic liquid crystal composition is described. The liquid crystal composition contains an achiral component T and a chiral agent, contains at least one compound represented by formula (1) as a first component of the achiral component T, and exhibits an optically isotropic liquid crystal phase:

Liquid crystal display devices using liquid crystal compositions are widely utilized for displays of watches, calculators, word processors and so on. The liquid crystal display devices utilize refractive index anisotropy, dielectric anisotropy and so on of liquid crystal compounds. As an operation mode in the liquid crystal display device, a mode mainly using at least one polarizing plate to display images is known, such as a phase change (PC), twisted nematic (TN), super twisted nematic (STN), bistable twisted nematic (BTN), electrically controlled birefringence (ECB), optically compensated bend (OCB), in-plane switching (IPS) or vertical alignment (VA) mode. Furthermore, a research has been recently conducted actively on a mode that exhibits electric birefringence by applying an electric field to an optically isotropic liquid crystal phase (Patent literature Nos. 1 to 14, Non-patent literature Nos. 1 to 3).
Furthermore, a proposal has been made for a wavelength variable filter, a wavefront control device, a liquid crystal lens, an aberration correction device, an aperture control device, an optical head device or the like utilizing electric birefringence in a blue phase as one of the optically isotropic liquid crystal phases (Patent literature Nos. 10 to 12).
The classification based on the driving mode of the device includes passive matrix (PM) and active matrix (AM) types. The passive matrix (PM) types are further classified into static type, multiplex type and so forth, and the AM types are further classified into thin film transistor (TFT) type, metal insulator metal (MIM) type and so forth.
The liquid crystal display devices include a liquid crystal composition having suitable physical properties. In order to improve characteristics of the liquid crystal display device, the liquid crystal composition preferably has suitable physical properties. General physical properties necessary for the liquid crystal compound as a component of the liquid crystal composition are as described below:
(1) being chemically stable and physically stable;
(2) having a high clearing point (clearing point: phase transition temperature between a liquid crystal phase and an isotropic phase);
(3) having a low minimum temperature of the liquid crystal phase (a nematic phase, a cholesteric phase, a smectic phase, an optically isotropic phase such a blue phase, or the like);
(4) having an excellent compatibility with other liquid crystal compounds;
(5) having a dielectric anisotropy of a suitable magnitude; and
(6) having a refractive index anisotropy of a suitable magnitude.
In particular, from a viewpoint of reducing the driving voltage, a liquid crystal compound having both a large dielectric anisotropy and a large refractive index anisotropy is preferred for the optically isotropic liquid crystal phase.
If a liquid crystal compound containing a liquid crystal compound being chemically and physically stable as described in property (1) is used in the liquid crystal display device, the voltage holding ratio can be increased.
With a liquid crystal composition containing a liquid crystal compound having a high clearing point or a low minimum temperature of the liquid crystal phase as described in properties (2) and (3), the temperature range of the nematic phase or the optically isotropic liquid crystal phase can be extended, and the liquid crystal composition can be used in the form of a display device in a wide temperature range. In order to develop characteristics that are difficult to be achieved by a single compound, the liquid crystal compound is generally used in the form of a liquid crystal composition prepared by mixing the compound with many other liquid crystal compounds. Accordingly, the liquid crystal compound to be used in the liquid crystal device preferably has the good compatibility with other liquid crystal compounds as described in property (4). In particular, a liquid crystal display device having a higher display performance in characteristics such as contrast, display capacity and response time has been recently required. Furthermore, a liquid crystal composition having a low driving voltage is required for a liquid crystal material to be used. Moreover, a liquid crystal compound having large dielectric anisotropy and refractive index anisotropy is preferably used in order to drive at a low voltage the optical device to be driven in the optically isotropic liquid crystal phase.

Optically isotropic liquid crystal medium and optical device

Abstract: wherein, for example, R1 is alkyl having 1 to 20 carbons; L1 to L8 are independently hydrogen or fluorine; Z1 to Z3 are each independently a single bond, —COO— or —CF2O—, but at least one thereof is —COO—; n1 and n2 are each independently 0 or 1; and X1 is halogen.


An optical element manufacturing method includes: disposing a light-shielding layer (14) that includes at least an Si layer as an uppermost layer, on a substrate (12) used as a base member, forming an optical aperture (14a) at the light-shielding layer (14) and forming a fine recession/projection structure (MR) at a surface of the uppermost layer through dry etching.

The use of a Nipkow disk with numerous pinholes formed in a radially spiraling pattern in a light-shielding member (e.g., a chromium film) formed on one side of a disk-shaped glass substrate in a confocal microscope has been proposed in the related art. In such a confocal microscope, the illuminating light is scanned onto the specimen under examination by rotating the Nipkow disk. There is a technology known in the related art (see, for instance, patent reference literature 1) adopted so as to prevent light having been reflected at the surface of the Nipkow disk from entering a detector, by setting the Nipkow disk at a tilt relative to the optical axis.
Patent Reference Literature 1: U.S. Pat. No. 4,927,254

Optical element manufacturing method, optical element, Nipkow disk, confocal optical system and 3-D measurement device


The ink jet recording method ejects an actinic radiation curable ink having a cationically polymerizable component from an ink jet recording head onto a recording media, and subsequently cures the ink by exposing it to actinic radiation. The ink in a recording media satisfy the formula (|C−B|) of 0–20 mN/m in which C is the surface tension of the recording media in mN/m and B is the surface tension of the cured ink in mN/m after exposure to the actinic radiation.

The present invention relates to a novel ink jet recording method employing an actinic radiation curable ink.
Heretofore, widely employed as ink jet recording ink has been aqueous liquid ink (water based ink). Further, a hot-melt type ink jet recording method is proposed in which a hot-melt type ink comprising wax as a component, which is solid at room temperature, is used and the aforesaid ink is liquefied by heating and the like, ejected by application of any appropriate form of energy, deposited onto recording media, and cooled to a solid to form recording dots.
Since the aforesaid ink is solid at room temperature, no staining occurs during handling. Further, since it is possible to minimize the evaporation amount of the aforesaid ink during melting, no clogging occurs. In addition, since the aforesaid ink is immediately solidified after deposition onto recording media, no "bleeding" occurs. As a result, the aforesaid ink exhibits advantages such that it is possible to use various types of recording media such as Japanese paper, drawing paper, postcards, or plastic sheets, without pre-treatment.
On the other hand, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,391,369 and 4,484,949 disclose ink which results in good printing quality irrespective of paper quality. Further, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 56-93776 discloses ultraviolet radiation curable resinous ink which results in desired adhesion onto metal surface. Still further, as an ink jet recording ink which is cured by exposure to ultraviolet radiation, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,228,438 discloses ink which is comprised of epoxy-modified acrylic resins and urethane-modified acrylic resins as a binder, as well as pigments comprised of particles of a diameter of at most 5 microns as a coloring component. Further, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 58-32674 discloses ink in which cationically polymerizable epoxy resins are employed as a binder, while Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 5-186725 discloses ink comprised of water-soluble or water-insoluble dyes which can be easily printed on plain paper as well as recycled paper.
As noted above, demanded has been emergence of an ink jet recording method which is capable of carrying out highly detailed printing resulting in photographic quality images on various media such as plastic sheets without requiring ink special jet paper sheets.
However, when the aforesaid water-soluble liquid ink is employed, it becomes difficult to carry out printing on non-ink absorptive recording media. Even though special paper sheets are employed, a relatively large ink drying apparatus is required. In addition, it is difficult to carry out highly detailed printing due to problematic bleeding and resolution is limited, whereby its overall use is currently limited.
Even when hot-melt type ink using the aforesaid wax is employed, it is possible to carry out printing on non-absorptive recording media which exhibit no ink absorbability, and in addition to carry out high speed printing. However, the aforesaid hot-melt type ink causes problems in which the resulting images hardly exhibit sufficient reliability due to very low abrasion resistance and in addition, exhibit insufficient smoothness.
On the other hand, the ink jet recording systems, which employ organic pigments as a colorant, exhibit many advantages especially in the aspect of weather resistance, compared to ink jet recording systems employing dyes. As a result, being not limited to OA equipment, general home use printers, and office printers such as facsimile machines, the aforesaid ink jet recording system is expected to be (used for application of printing outdoor posters, large signboards, and decorations of cars, glass, elevators, walls, and buildings, as well as fabrics.
Further, an ink jet recording system employing an actinic radiation curable ink, which is cured by actinic radiation such as ultraviolet radiation, makes it possible to carry out printing on non-ink absorptive recording media. However in ink jet recording systems in which ink is not substantially comprised of water and organic solvents, and the liquid ink composition is cured by actinic radiation such as ultraviolet radiation, neither disclosure nor proposals are made which results in highly detailed printing under the control of dot diameter. Further, in highly detailed printing, it is essential that the formed dot diameter is controlled to be small and the contour is clear without bleeding. Further, when printing is carried out on non-ink absorptive media employing an ink jet recording system, it is difficult to control not only the amount of ink droplets but also the dot diameter. Particularly, it is a more difficult problem to control the diameter of dots formed by small droplets.
Further, when images are formed employing a plurality of kinds of ink in the same way as color printing, it is essential that in order to carry out highly detailed printing, dot shape formed by each kind of ink is uniform.
In order to control the aforesaid dot shape, it is effective to regulate the surface tension of the ink. For example, a method (refer to Patent Document 1) is proposed which specifies surface tension of ink to 25–35 mN/m. However, only specification of surface tension of ink, as described above, is insufficient to achieve highly detailed printing. Subsequently, technical improvement is further demanded.
(Patent Document 1)
International Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. WO 99/29788 (claims)

Ink jet recording method employing inks with specific surface tensions


An input signal such as a HDTV signal is split into a primary signal, which can be decoded if desired, and an secondary signal, which can remain compressed. The primary signal may be delayed and then both signals are transmitted to a receiver. If no error in the primary signal is detected, the primary signal is used to display data. Otherwise, the secondary signal, which arrives before the primary signal and consequently which is available for substitution, is displayed.

Error correction of source signals is a fertile field. In particular, error correction of digital data such as wirelessly transmitted information including but not limited to high definition (HD) TV signals is of interest, because data can be lost or corrupted in transmission. For instance, for short range transmission of HDTV using, e.g., the 60 GHz unlicensed frequency band, if a person walks between the transmitter and receiver, data can be momentarily lost. The present invention is directed to an improved method for error correction that is particularly though not exclusively useful for error correction in wirelessly transmitted HDTV signals.

System and method for error correction in high definition TV signal


A three dimensional ferroelectric memory device formed on a semiconductor substrate has insulative material formed between rows of conductors to reduce cross talk between the conductors. Access circuitry or other circuitry is formed beneath the three dimensional structure. Continuous conductors, or staggered vias provide for connection to conductors forming the memory cells. An access circuit is provided which eliminates the need for an access transistor for each memory cell by using a memory cell with a reference cell in combination with sensing circuitry. Read cycles are followed by write cycles and an equilibrate cycle to reverse the effects of destructive reads on the memory cells. Side by side memory structures provide the ability to access using either a folded or open bit line circuit.

Random access memory devices for storing digital data have usually taken the form of integrated circuit devices having thousands of memory cells. The memory cells in the past have been formed with capacitors to hold an electrical charge representative of a bit of data, and numerous transistor and diode structures associated with each cell to access the data. The ability to provide more memory cells in a given area has been directly related to the ability to form smaller and smaller structures using photolithography and other common processes and to improvements in reducing the amount of access circuitry associated with each cell. X-ray lithography promises smaller structures, but is far from becoming practical. Another option is to stack layers of memory cells on top of one another. A problem with stacking arises from the use of high temperatures to form the subsequent layers. The high temperatures cause the previous layers to continue to change. Dopants used in the formation of the previous layers continue to diffuse under such high temperatures, making it very difficult to keep the memory cells in earlier formed layers from becoming defective.
One solution to this problem is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,085 to Gnade et al. Rather than using the standard transistors and capacitive electrical charge to represent digital data, Gnade et al. uses the magnetization of ferroelectric material in a three dimensional semiconductor structure. As seen in prior art FIG. 1, which corresponds to FIG. 4 in the Gnade et al. patent, a first set of parallel conductors 14a, 14b, 14c, are arranged perpendicularly to a second set of parallel conductors indicated at 18 over a semiconductor substrate 12. A layer of ferroelectric material 16 is deposited between the sets of conductors. When an electrical voltage is applied to a conductor in each layer, the ferroelectric material between the overlap of the conductors forms a capacitor which retains an electrical polarization whose orientation is representative of a bit of data. The orientation of the polarization affects the value of the capacitance between the conductors. Data stored in a cell can be determined by applying an electric voltage, and detecting the difference in capacitance caused by different polarization orientations of the cell. Multiple layers of conductors and ferroelectric material are formed without adversely affecting previous layers, providing a three dimensional storage device.
A problem with the three dimensional storage device described above is that the ferroelectric material is deposited between the lower set of conductors, resulting in significant capacitive loading between adjacent conductors. If the loading is too great, the polarization of the ferroelectric material may not be sufficient to generate a readable signal, resulting in corruption of data in the storage device. There is a need for providing three dimensional ferroelectric semiconductor memory devices with minimal capacitive loading between adjacent cells to permit the accurate reading and writing of data.
To read data from a cell, prior ferroelectric storage devices associated an access transistor with each cell to couple the cell to its bit line. Some cells contain two ferroelectric capacitors and two access transistors with one functioning as a reference. The ferroelectric capacitors within each memory cell receive complementary input signals such that the ferroelectric capacitors are polarized in opposite states to indicate a 1 or a 0. When the pairs of capacitors for each cell are read, a resulting voltage on the bit lines, which result from applying a pulse on a plate line, is compared using a differential sense amplifier to compare the voltages on the bit lines and thus determine the polarity on the ferroelectric capacitors within the cell. Having an access transistor for each cell added considerable volume to the size of each cell, reducing the overall cell density obtainable for a ferroelectric storage device. There is a need for a simple access circuit that can sense the data in a cell, and rewrite the data in the same memory access cycle.
While the density of memory cells in three dimensional ferroelectric storage devices is much higher than that of conventional semiconductor memories, the circuitry used to access the memory cells still requires much real estate on the semiconductor substrate. As seen in Gnade et al., the read/write circuitry is positioned adjacent the three dimensional memory cell structure with conductors from the structure being coupled to the adjacent circuitry. There is a need to further increase the overall density of memory cells in storage devices, including the need to reduce the real estate needs of the access circuitry. There is yet a further need to provide electrical contacts to the access circuitry from the three dimensional ferroelectric storage device. In addition, the circuit must be capable of utilizing a reference cell in addition to the data cell without the use of a transistor for each cell.


An optical printing head for an optical printing device includes a long board with aligned light emitting diode arrays having a plurality of light emitting areas mounted and fixed on the board thereof, a holder provided with a staged portion therein, a fixing by pressure means for fixing the board to the staged portion of the holder by pressure and a lens array held at a predetermined position with respect to the board by the holder. This arrangement allows an optical printing head to be made small in scale and easy to be assembled without deteriorating printing quality.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an optical printing head for an optical printing system using an array of light emitting diodes (referred to as "LED" hereinafter), and more particularly, to a structure of an optical printing head which can be made small in scale and can be assembled with more ease without deteriorating printing quality.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, optical printing systems using a combination of a small light emission point and a photoreceptor have been developed for use in terminal devices for computers, regular paper copying machines, image storing and printing devices and the like because of their advantages of high speed and noiseless operation, high resolution, and high printing quality operation. These optical printing systems are referred to as laser printers, LED printers and the like depending on the type of light source used therein.
One of the optical printing systems using an optical printing head having light emitting areas corresponding to printing dots is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,597. With reference to FIG. 1, in the optical printing system disclosed in the U.S. Patent with LED arrays 1 disposed alternately in two rows in a staggered configuration, data generated by a control unit 3 is transmitted in series to a shift register 4, thereby causing a LED driver 5 to drive one row of light emitting diode arrays by delaying the same by a memory, to perform predetermined printing.
Operations of a mechanical portion of this optical printing system are as follows. A photosensitive surface 7a of a photosensitive drum 7 to be driven to rotate by a motor 6 is first charged by a corona charger 8 before exposure. Thereafter, photosensitive surface 7a is exposed by LED array 2 and a short focus lens array 9 (hereinafter referred to as a "lens array"). As a result, the electric charges at the exposed portion of photosensitive surface 7a are neutralized, so that out of toner 11 applied on photosensitive surface 7a in a developing unit 10, the toner only on the exposed portion is transferred onto a sheet of printing paper 13 at a transfer stage 12. The toner 11 left on the non-exposed portion of photosensitive surface 7a is removed at a cleaning stage 14. A perspective schematic type arrangement of photosensitive drum 7, LED array 2 and lens array 9 is as shown in FIG. 2.
Relative positioning of LED array 2, lens array 9 and photosensitive drum 7 is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 59-170816 and Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 62-282957. In the positioning disclosed in these documents, the temperatures of the LED arrays and driving elements therefor increase by controlling lighting. In addition, the depth of focus of the lens array is small and the distance between a light source and a photosensitive surface (i.e. an object-image surface distance) should be precisely set within a conjugation length, with a margin as small as around .+-.0.2 mm. In particular, such variation caused after positioning should be prevented as variation in an optical position caused by a board curve due to the increased temperature thereof resulted from driving of a LED array.
A means for preventing this variation in optical position is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,733,127. As shown in FIG. 3, the device disclosed in this U.S. Patent is provided with a flat radiator plate 15 on which a board 1 with a LED array 2 attached thereto is fixed by means of an adhesive material or the like, and a lens holder 16 for holding a lens array 9 is fixed by means of, for example, screws 17, thereby preventing effects of thermal deformation to maintain a once adjusted optical distance. In addition, a transparent glass plate 19 supported by protection frames 18 covers over LED array 2.
As shown in FIG. 4, lens array 9 is structured, for example, by optical fiber lens 9a sandwiched by sandwich plates 9b. The refractive index of optical fiber lens 9a is at a maximum at the axial center thereof and decreases approximately directly as the square of a radius from the axial center. The optical fiber lens therefore serves as a convergent lens even if a light receiving and emitting plane is flat, thereby converging the light emitted from LED array 2 positioned at a distance of the focal length f from the light receiving end surface of lens array 9 onto a photosensitive surface 7a positioned at a distance of the focal length f from the light emitting end surface of lens array 9 as shown in FIG. 5.
A converging rod lens array consisting of, e.g. the SELFOC lenses can be used in place of lens array 9 including optical fiber lens 9a. The ELFOC lenses have a radial distribution of refractive indexes from its center toward its periphery to allow light to pass therethrough in a zigzag direction in a fixed cycle, thereby functioning as image forming lenses.
However, the structure of the optical printing head shown in FIG. 4 requires a radiator plate 15 having a large area for fixing board 1 and lens holder 16 thereon, which is followed by an increase of a longitudinal width of the optical printing head. Taking into consideration that many parts such as corona charger 8 and developing unit 10 are arranged on the periphery of photosensitive drum 7 of the optical printing system to which the optical printing head is attached as shown in FIG. 1, the increased width of the optical printing head prevents a reduction in scale of the system.
In addition, in order to securely fix board 1 and lens holder 16 on radiator plate 15 for keeping the optical distance constant, many screws 17 and other fixing members are required. With many fixing members required, fixing the members for adjusting the above-described optical distance is very complicated, and moving the fixing members when the optical printing head is fixed results in a displacement of relative position of the adjusted optical elements.

Optical printing head for optical printing system


A socket for removably mounting an electronic device and which has utility for testing of the electronic device. The socket includes pinch-style support contacts which establish a reference seating plane for an IC package. The pinch-style support contacts each include a stationary contact arm, a movable contact arm, and a terminal portion. The stationary contact arm and the movable contact arm each include a contact surface configured to contact a terminal of the IC package. The stationary contact arm additionally includes an IC package support surface and extends beyond the height of the movable contact arm. A method of supporting and electrically connecting the socket and IC package is also disclosed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a socket for removably mounting an electronic device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a pinch-style support contact configured to establish a reference seating plane for an integrated circuit (IC) package within the socket, as well as provide electrical communication for the IC package and the socket.
2. State of the Art
Testing a semiconductor die often involves establishing an electrical connection between testing equipment and the integrated circuitry of the die. Testing may be performed on an unpackaged semiconductor die that has been singulated from a semiconductor wafer, on a section of semiconductor dice that are still part of the wafer, or on all of the semiconductor dice on a wafer. Moreover, a bare semiconductor die that has undergone packaging may also be tested. One example of such a packaged semiconductor die is a so-called "flip-chip," wherein discrete conductive elements, such as solder balls, are attached directly to or formed on the bond pads or redistributed bond pads at the ends of electrical traces formed on the active surface of the semiconductor die. The die is then "flipped," or mounted face down, so that the solder balls may connect with contact members of another device, such as terminal pads of a carrier substrate. Another example is a "chip scale package," which includes a die along with one or more package elements, such as encapsulating material in the form of thin protective coatings formed of a dielectric material bonded to the active surface, sides and back side of the semiconductor die; in addition, solder balls may be attached to or formed on ends of electrical traces on the active surface of the semiconductor die or directly to the semiconductor die's bond pads through openings in the encapsulating material. A Ball Grid Array (BGA) serves as yet another example that involves even more packaging: the semiconductor die is wire bonded to terminal pads on the top side of an interposer substrate and encapsulated, and solder balls are bonded to electrical traces on the bottom side of the substrate that are electrically connected to the terminal pads.
An electronic device to be tested will hereinafter be referred to as an integrated circuit package, or IC package, regardless of the singulation or packaging state of the semiconductor die or dice that form all or part of the IC package. One method of testing the IC package involves placing the IC package into a socket, which comprises a body with apertures that span through the body. These apertures house contact members that are aligned with electrical terminals of the IC package. For purposes of explanation only, it will be assumed that the terminals of the IC package are solder balls or other discrete conductive elements that protrude from the IC package. Often, the socket includes cover that, when closed, adjusts a slider to actuate arms of the contact members and engage the solder balls of the IC package. Contact members comprising arms which may open and close about solder balls may be referred to as pinch-style contacts. Once the IC package has been inserted, the socket may then be plugged into a printed circuit board (PCB) or other carrier substrate.
One example of a conventional socket with pinch-style contacts used in burn-in tests for electronic packages having BGA terminals is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,350,138 issued to Atobe et al. (hereinafter "the '138 patent"), on Feb. 26, 2002. The '138 patent discloses, as shown in FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B hereof, a conventional socket 1 including a seating part 5a supporting a BGA package 9 on the periphery of the BGA package body.
The depicted socket 1 comprises a base 2 as the main socket body, a cover 3, a slider 4 mounted on the base 2, which serves as a contact part switching member, and an adaptor 5 mounted on the slider 4. The base 2 may be attached to a PCB (not shown) for testing the BGA package 9. The cover 3 is formed in the shape of a square frame with an opening at the center for the purpose of inserting the BGA package 9. The base 2 and cover 3 are relatively movable toward and away from each other while maintaining a mutually parallel state. Contact members 6 are provided at positions which correspond to solder balls 11 provided on the lower side of the BGA package 9. Each contact member 6 includes a pair of arms 6a, 6b for engaging a solderball 11. The slider 4 includes a lattice-like partition wall capable of moving in a vertical direction, thus engaging the contact members 6, causing the pair of arms of each contact member to open or close. A slider 4 capable of moving in a horizontal direction to engage the contact members 6 is also known in the art. The terminal portions 6c of the contact members 6 provide attachment to the PCB (not shown).
The contact members 6 pass through the base 2 and apertures 4b of the slider 4. The contact arms 6a, 6b include tips 7, located within substantially the same plane. The seating part 5a supporting the BGA package 9 creates a seating plane, the plane of a bottom surface 8 of the IC package body, or substrate 10. One difficulty in the construction of the socket 1 is ensuring that the plane of the contact arm tips 7 is parallel to the seating plane. In addition, the spacing of the plane of the contact arm tips 7 must be a proper distance from the seating plane to ensure reliable electrical connection, as described further hereinbelow. The seating part 5a and the base 2 conventionally comprise plastic, and tolerances for forming plastic parts are typically high relative to the tolerances for the conventional stamping and stitching processes for forming contact members 6. Tolerance stacking, or accumulation, of tolerances of a plurality of components may add to the error introduced by the individual tolerances. Nonplanarities in the seating part 5a, as well as nonplanarities in the IC package substrate 10, for example, bowing, may further contribute to error in the seating plane, and therefore error in the spacing between the seating plane and the plane of the contact arm tips 7.
One example of a problem resulting from improper spacing between the plane of the contact arm tips 7 of a socket 1 and the seating plane of the BGA package 9 is that a trace (not shown) on a bottom surface 8 of the IC package substrate 10 may interfere with the movement of a contact arm 6a, 6b if the seating plane of the IC package is positioned too close to the plane of the contact arm tips 7. The trace may protrude from the bottom surface 8 of the IC package substrate 10. The contact arm tip 7 of a moving contact arm 6a or 6b may intersect the trace, preventing further movement, and therefore, contact with the solder ball 11. If the contact member touches or rubs against the BGA package substrate 10, especially while moving to make contact with the solder ball 11, the bottom surface 8 of the IC package substrate 10 may be scratched, which may result in unreliability of the BGA package 9 in later service due to entry of moisture or other contaminants or undetected damage to circuitry, since scratches may damage the passivation layer on the IC package substrate 10, or may expose the underlying traces and cause shorts.
Another problem with spacing error results from the contact arm tips 7 touching the BGA package 9. The IC package substrate 10 may expand, for example during an increase in temperature, such as burn-in testing. Contact arm tips 7 touching the IC package substrate 10 when the IC package substrate 10 expands may move with the expansion of the IC package substrate 10, causing the contact arms 6a, 6b to pull apart and lose reliable electrical communication with the solder ball 11.
A third concern in relation to BGA package test sockets is that the IC package may not be held in the socket securely enough to maintain a valid testing process through sufficient continuous electrical communication between the socket and the IC package, yet not so securely held that the IC package or its electrical connections are damaged, particularly during removal of the IC package from the test socket.
In view of the foregoing, it appears that a socket with an improved seating plane for an IC package and a method of forming electrical connection with improved accuracy between a socket and an IC package would be useful.

Pinch-style support contact, method of enabling electrical communication with and supporting an IC package, and socket including same


An image input module inputs image signals which have different sampling rates. Based on a predetermined processing flow, a filter processing module carries out a filter processing by a predetermined filter factor on the image signals which are inputted by the image input module. A plurality of filter factors which are used at the filter processing module are set at a filter factor setting module. A filter factor selecting module selects, from among a plurality of filter factors, an appropriate filter factor in accordance with the sampling rates of the image signals and the processing flow, and supplies them to the filter processing module.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device and a method for controlling the same, and in particular, to an image processing device and a method for controlling the same which employ a technique which is applied to filter processing in an image processing section of an image forming device, such as a color image copier or the like, which handles image signals of different sampling rates.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional color image copier, three-channel image signals such as RGB signals are read out by a charge coupled device (CCD) or the like at the same sampling rate, and are processed in an image processing section at a latter stage.
Thus, at a filter included in the image processing section, frequency characteristics, such as a cut-off frequency and the like, which are appropriate for only that sampling rate are set.
Moreover, when a line sensor (CCD), which outputs image signals of plural channels having different sampling rates, is used as image input means, a Nyquist frequency changes in accordance with the sampling rate. Thus, functions such as elimination of moire and the like cannot be realized with the same filter factor.
In particular, when an image, to which a screen (dots) has been applied, is inputted such as a document manuscript by dot printing, at a time of a low sampling rate, the Nyquist frequency is lower than the screen frequency. Sampling is carried out with a periodic configuration of the manuscript image being bent back with the Nyquist frequency in the center.
On the other hand, at a time of a high sampling rate, there are cases in which the Nyquist frequency is higher than the frequency of the periodic configuration of the input image (the number of dot lines of the printed manuscript).
In this way, when the Nyquist frequency changes in accordance with the sampling rate of the input image signal, at the filter processing section, functions such as the elimination of moire and the like cannot be realized when filter processing is carried out at the same filter factor. Thus, a separate, excessive un-sharpness processing is required, and the problem arises that this is not always preferable from the standpoint of cost performance.

Image processing device and method for controlling the same


The invention relates to electrochemical devices comprising complexes of cobalt comprising at least one ligand with a 5- or six membered, N-containing heteroring. The complex are useful as p- and n-dopants, as over of electrochemical devices, in particular in organic semiconductors. The complexes are further useful as over-discharge prevention and overvoltage protection agents.

Chemical doping is an important strategy to alter the charge transport properties of both molecular and polymeric organic semiconductors, and finds application in organic electronic devices, for instance in organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). Various materials have been reported for their use as p-dopants, for example, ranging from strongly electron-accepting organic molecules such as 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyano-quinodimethane (F4-TCNQ) to transition metal oxides such as WO3 (Meyer, J. et al., Mater. Chem. 2009, 19, 702), metal organic complexes such as molybdenum tris-[1,2-bis(trifluoromethyl)ethane-1,2-dithiolene] (Qi, Y. et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131, 12530-12531) and redox active salts such as NOBF4 (Snaith, H. J. et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 2006, 89, 262114) or (p-BrC6H4)3NSbCl6 (Bach, U. et al., Nature 1998, 395, 583-585. Many of these materials are usually applied by vacuum deposition techniques and exhibit low solubility in organic solvent, others are facing stability issues or are reactive and prone to side reactions.
It is thus an objective of the present invention to provide a new class of dopants that allows to easily tune the chemical, physical, optical and/or electronic properties of the doping agent in order to carefully adapt it to the desired application. For example, for OLEDs, doping of interfaces might be preferable, which is easier if the dopant is deposited by thermal evaporation. Dopants based on metal complex having negatively charged ligands, for example, may be used to obtain neutral complexes that can be deposited by thermal evaporation. Doping at interfaces by evaporation could be used for OLEDs, organic solar cells and also the solid state dye-sensitized solar cells (ssDCSs).
Furthermore, it is an objective to provide dopants the solubility of which can be adjusted. For example, it is an objective to provide dopants that are easily soluble in organic solvents, that are stable and that do not engage in undesired side reactions in the device. Besides the solubility, the dopants are ideally charged or neutral to use by thermal evaporation in organic light emitting diodes, and solar cells.
In organic light emitting diodes (OLED), one problem of dopants is their diffusion across the different layers of the OLED, leading to a reduction in performance or even loss of function. It would thus be advantageous to provide dopants the diffusion of which can be controlled, for example by using suitable counter ions.
Dopants are also used in solid state (ss) dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) applications, in which the liquid electrolyte is replaced by a solid hole transporting material (HTM). In particular when using 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenyl-amine)-9,9′-spirobifluorene (spiro-MeOTAD) as HTM, high power conversion efficiencies have been yielded. Bach et al. (1998) were the first to report on the use of spiro-MeOTAD in ssDSCs and although research interest to identify competitive alternatives is strong, spiro-MeOTAD is still the system of choice when high efficiencies are demanded. Several intrinsic properties like its glass transition temperature, solubility, ionization potential, absorption spectrum and solid-state morphology make Spiro-MeOTAD a suitable candidate for DSC applications. However, similar to other organic hole conductors including liquid hole conductors, spiro-MeOTAD suffers from a relatively low conductivity in its pristine form. It is an objective to provide dopants that can also be used in liquid organic charge transporting materials.
It is an objective of the invention to provide means for increasing conductivity of charge transporting materials, in particular of hole and/or electron transporting materials, such as, for example, organic conductors or semiconductors.
It is also an objective of the invention to provide a means to improve charge collection and/or charge transfer, for example at the interface, in particular in case dopants are applied by evaporating the dopant.
With respect to solid state dye-sensitized solar cells (ssDSCs) it is noted that Bach et al (1998) already employed (p-BrC6H4)3NSbCl6 as a chemical p-dopant but up to the present date, no detailed study on p-type doping in dye solar cells has been reported. Surprisingly, the use of chemically p-doped spiro-MeOTAD has gradually diminished and most of the recent publications on spiro-MeOTAD-based ssDSCs do not follow this strategy. The reason, why high power conversion efficiencies can still be achieved, is the device fabrication under atmospheric conditions and a facile reaction of spiro-MeOTAD with molecular oxygen under illumination, a process referred to as photo-doping. Therefore, it is currently believed that chemical p-doping is not necessarily the key to high performance. On the other hand, photo-doping is clearly a process that is not easy to control. Therefore, it is an objective of the present invention to provide means of increasing conductivity of organic charge transporting materials by other and/or additional ways than by photo doping. It is in particular an objective to increasing conductivity of organic charge transporting material in a highly reproducible way and to fabricate stable electrochemical devices using organic charge transporting materials.
With respect to rechargeable batteries, such batteries are used in many electronic devices, in particular portable devices, such as cell phones, laptops, tablet computers (iPad, etc), portable computer game consoles and so forth, for example. Rechargeable batteries, in particular lithium-ion batteries, may experience thermal runaway resulting in overheating. Sealed cells will sometimes explode violently. Lithium-ion batteries can rupture, ignite or explode when exposed to high temperature. For example, short-circuiting may cause the cell to overheat and possibly catch fire. It is an objective of the invention to provide ways for preventing or reducing the risk of explosion and/or the risk of over-discharging.
It is also an objective of the invention to provide agents that can be used for protecting electronic devices, in particular electrochemical devices against overvoltage.
The present invention addresses the problems and objectives depicted above, which are part of the present invention.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Metal complexes for use as dopants and other uses

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)


Techniques for managing XML data in an SQL compliant DBMS include receiving an SQL statement. The SQL statement includes a particular operator that operates on a first instance of XML type that represents a first set of XML elements. During execution of the SQL statement, the particular operator is evaluated by generating an ordered collection of instances of XML type. Each different instance in the ordered collection is based on a different XML element from the first set; and there is an instance in the ordered collection for every XML element from either the first set or from the first set and its descendents. When descendents are included, each entry in the ordered collection indicates a level in the XML tree. In another aspect, an aggregate operator in the SQL statement operates on a collection of instances, with associated levels, to generate a single instance of XML type.

The World Wide Web (WWW) involves a network of servers on the Internet, each of which is associated with one or more Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages. The HTML pages are transferred between clients that make requests of servers and the servers using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Resources available from servers on the Internet are located using a Universal Resource Locator (URL). The standards and protocols of the WWW are promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) through its servers at www.w3c.org, and are used on many private networks in addition to their use on the Internet.
The HTML standard is one application of a more general markup language standard called the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Recently, a subset of SGML that is more powerful and flexible than HTML has been defined and has gained popularity for transferring information over the Internet and other networks. The new standard, developed and promoted by W3C, is called the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XML provides a common syntax for expressing structure in data. Structured data refers to data that is tagged for its content, meaning, or use. XML provides an expansion of the tagging that is done in HTML, which focuses on format or presentation. XML tags identify XML elements and attributes of XML elements. XML elements can be nested to form hierarchies of elements.
Given the elements defined and used by XML, a document object model (DOM) is a tree structure formed to define how the information in an XML document is arranged. The DOM is navigated using an XPath expression that indicates a particular node or content in the hierarchy of elements and attributes in an XML document. XPath is a standard promulgated by W3C.
Relational databases predate, and developed independently of, the World Wide Web. Relational databases store data in various types of data containers that correspond to logical relationships within the data. As a consequence, relational databases support powerful search and update capabilities. Relational databases typically store data in tables of rows and columns where the values in all the columns of one row are related. For example, the values in one row of an employee table describe attributes of the same employee, such as her name, social security number, address, salary, telephone number and other information. Each attribute is stored in a different column. Some attributes, called collections, can have multiple entries. For example, the employee may be allowed to have multiple telephone numbers. Special structures are defined in some relational databases to store collections.
A relational database management system (DBMS) is a system that stores and retrieves data in a relational database. The relational DBMS processes requests to perform database functions such as creating and deleting tables, adding and deleting data in tables, and retrieving data from the tables in the database. A well-known standard language for expressing the database requests is the Structured Query Language (SQL).
Because of the popularity of XML as a data exchange format that supports hierarchical relationships among elements, and because of the power of relational DBMSs to update and retrieve data, there is a demand for generating XML data output from relational databases and storing XML data into relational databases. In one approach, a database administrator can commission programming efforts to generate code in a procedural language that maps data in particular XML constructs to data in particular relational database constructs and back. Such programming efforts can be expensive.
In another approach, declarative statements, similar to SQL statements, can be employed to simply express the relationship between XML constructs and SQL constructs. General routines that convert the data according to declared relationships are written one time by a DBMS vendor and supplied to a database administrator. This saves the database administrator from developing procedural language programs to convert the data. To support this demand, an industry standard SQL to operate on XML documents has been developed. This standard is called SQL/XML and information relating to SQL/XML is available at the time of this writing at www.sqlx.org. SQL/XML provides declarative statements that can be used to simply express some conversions between data in hierarchical XML constructs and data in SQL relational constructs (. For example XMLAgg is a SQL/XML function that generates one XML document from a set of XML elements generated from selected rows of a relational table.
As used herein, XML constructs include XML documents, XML elements, document fragments that include multiple XML elements, and XML attributes of XML elements, among others. Data manipulated in an SQL compliant DBMS, and structured by the DBMS so as to support generation of XML constructs to convey that data, are called "instances of XML type," or simply "XML data." Such XML data may or may not be stored in such SQL constructs as tables, rows and columns.
While SQL/XML statements provide powerful tools for many circumstances that arise in converting between XML constructs and SQL constructs, they do not simply accommodate all circumstances that arise. For example, an instance of XML type may include data for an employee element that includes several child elements corresponding to various devices signed out to the employee. A user of the DBMS may want to generate a series of XML documents that describes the devices that satisfy some criterion. A conventional SQL/XML statement for extracting those child elements produces a single instance with all the devices that satisfy the criterion. To generate a separate instance of XML type for each separate device, several conventional statements are used, one for each device that satisfies a sub-criterion. It is tedious to generate several statements. In some circumstances it may be impossible to predict the criterion to separate each device from the others. It is preferable in these circumstances to be able to use a single statement to produce the series of separate instances of XML type.
The current SQL/XML statements also do not support retaining some hierarchical relationships when converting between XML constructs and SQL constructs. Some XML elements may be nested within their own type to form a hierarchy. For example, a XML element called "employee" may have one or more other employee elements as child elements, which represent other employees supervised by the first employee. In some circumstances, the SQL/XML function EXTRACT operating on several employee elements in the document will simply output all those several employee element in series, without the nesting indicated in the original XML document. The result is a list of employees without the hierarchical information that indicates whether some employees as supervised children employees of a manager parent employee.
Some SQL rows may imply a hierarchy within a table of rows. For example, an "emp" table may include one row for each employee and include a column "mgr" which holds a pointer to another row of the emp table for a second employee who is a supervisor of the first employee. The SQL/XML function XMLAgg operating on multiple XML elements generated from the rows of this table will simply produce an XML document fragment with a set of root level elements (for example a series of XML elements of element name "employee"). The hierarchy is implied by the mgr attribute of each employee element; but, it would be more desirable if the employee elements were nested so that supervised employees are child elements of the manager employee element.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for declarative statements that enhance the manipulation of XML data in an SQL compliant DBMS. In particular, there is a need for declarative statements that preserve hierarchical relationships implied in SQL constructs when data in those constructs are converted to instances of XML type. There is also a particular need for declarative statements that preserve hierarchical relationships in an instance of XML type when that instance is converted to multiple instances of XML type.
The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not to be considered prior art to the claims in this application merely due to the presence of these approaches in this background section.

Techniques for retaining hierarchical information in mapping between XML documents and relational data


A system and method for rendering location dependent information on a communications terminal. A position of the communications terminal is retrieved and presented in a spatial orientation metaphor. A predetermined set of categories comprising objects with location dependent information are retrieved and criteria is determined for the objects to be retrieved. The determined objects associated with the set of categories are retrieved. Location dependent information associated with a first object of the determined objects is retrieved. The first object in the spatial orientation metaphor is presented.

The disclosed embodiments are is generally within the field of personal navigation. One of the basic user scenarios in this field is the 'Find nearest' problem: What are the close by restaurants? What are the nearest gasoline stations or cinemas? Which people are around?
Also in the field of navigation is the closely related "Orient myself" problem: Where am I? How far am I from the nearest subway station? How long will it take me to get there?
The "Find nearest" and "Orient myself" problems primarily occur when a user enters unknown turf, during business or leisure traveling, when exploring parts of a city not visited frequently by the user, etc. As the working life as well as the private life are getting even more mobile and outgoing, the need for fast, easy-to-use and portable solutions to "Find nearest" and "Orient myself" problems are getting even more relevant.
Before the era of the Internet and mobile communication, the most common solutions to "Find nearest" and "Orient myself" problems were roadmaps, street signs, guide books such as Lonely Planet, and asking strangers for directions. These solutions were limited in the sense that the achieved information were often outdated or inadequate and it would often take the person quite some time to find what he or she was looking for. Furthermore, these solutions seriously lacked a coolness factor, as the user would have to stand around with a clumsy map and try to orient herself, which often lead to the user making a fast (and thus un-informed) choice to avoid too much public embarrassment.
With the advent of the Internet, content service providers such as Yahoo and Map24 started offering on-line applications allowing the user to key in his or her position along with a specification of what he or she was looking for. In more advanced versions, the application would then provide a list of the nearest options and potentially a route description of how to get there shown on a map. Such solutions suggested more options to the user and worked faster than the pre-Internet solutions mentioned above. However, as these web based solutions were not portable, the user would still be left with only a paper map when on the go.
Recently, personal orientation solutions such as those provided by Yahoo, Map24 and the like, have been embedded in mobile phone technology to overcome the lack of portability. One example of such a solution is the Wayfinder software based on the Nokia S60 platform. Here, the user can enter his or her position via textual input (e.g. street name, street number, city, country) and subsequently choose what to look for or specify a destination, and information about the destination and route suggestions are provided to the user.
The S60 technology does provide a portable solution to "Find nearest" and "Orient myself" problems, but there is room for improvement. With the current solution, the user has to provide several pieces of textual input before he finds what he is looking for. Also, the user will often have to iterate the input several times to seek out different options. Furthermore, it can be difficult for the user to see the information presented on the display, as the application originally was adapted for the significantly larger display connected to a personal computer. Thus, the current solution does not provide a fast, easy and cool solution to the "Find nearest" and "Orient myself" problems.

Simple discovery UI of location aware information


An apparatus includes a frame with a guide for at least one displaceable transport container, a drive element for carrying the container in an endless track, a resetting device for placing a container in a starting position and a discharge station for selectively relieving a container of a load. The containers are provided with a movable carrying panel for receiving the load, including at least two tilt trays which extend between tilt axes located on both sides. The trays can be selectively titled between a transporting position and a discharge position, and are provided with a locking mechanism for locking the trays in the transport position. The resetting device is adapted to co-act with a passing opened container to place the trays thereof in the transport position, and the discharge station is able to selectively unlock the locking mechanism of a passing transport container to thus release the trays.

The present invention relates to an apparatus for transport and controlled discharge of a load, comprising a frame with a guide for at least one displaceable transport container, a drive means for carrying the transport container in an endless track, a resetting device for placing a transport container in a starting position and a discharge station for selectively receiving a load of a transport container, wherein the transport containers are provided with a movable carrying panel for receiving of the load thereon, comprising at least a first and a second tilt tray which extend between tilt axes located on both sides and which can be selectively tilted between a transporting position and a downward hanging discharge position.
Such an apparatus is applied in particular as sorting device for goods in distribution centres, mail order companies and production environments where different products have to be brought together per (dispatch) destination. The goods for sorting can per se be of many types but particularly comprise books, magazines, items of clothing and other articles with a significant own weight. The apparatus herein normally comprises a connected series of a few dozen to a few hundred transport containers in accordance with the desired sorting capacity. Per discharge station a dispatch box or other receiving means can be placed in which the goods are received per destination. The goods are supplied from a loading station to the transport containers in a sequence which is in principle random and identified manually or otherwise. The drive means carries the transport containers around the track at a relatively high speed, wherein at a certain moment a transport container will pass the discharge station for which the carried product is intended. Having arrived there, an electronic control of the apparatus sets means of the discharge station into operation which are able to actuate the locking mechanism of the transport container and thus release the tilt trays. Under the influence of the force of gravity the tilt trays drop open almost immediately and thus discharge the product into the waiting dispatch box or the like. The transport container then passes over the resetting device, wherein the two tilt trays are closed and the transport container is returned to its starting position, ready for a subsequent lap. Products can thus be distributed over the different discharge stations with a relatively large sorting capacity.
A known apparatus of the type indicated in the preamble is described in a Netherlands patent application made open to public inspection under number 9001116. The known apparatus comprises a drive means in the form of an endless chain to which is coupled a number of transport containers. These latter each comprise a carrying panel for receiving a load thereon consisting of two tilt trays tilting in opposite directions. The one tilt tray herein rests with an edge on the other tilt tray which is provided with a locking mechanism to retain this transporting position. If the locking mechanism is actuated at a discharge station by a solenoid disposed there along the transport path, the locking of the tilt trays is released and they both swing open in downward direction and so lose their load. This whole process takes place between entering and exiting the discharge station so that the load is discharged at the relevant discharge station. Having arrived at the resetting device, the foremost tilt tray as seen in the transport direction is co-displaced and raised by a closing profile, while the other tilt tray is provided diametrically of the tilt axis with an operating member which strikes against a stop disposed close to the track to thus also close this tilt tray and restore the locking.
In order to increase the sorting capacity of the apparatus it is the object in the first place to increase the transport speed. This means that in each of the discharge stations there is very little time available to discharge the collected goods, and that it must also be possible to close the transport container in a very short time. A relatively high own weight of the tilt trays enhances a rapid and reliable unloading, but also ensures that the tilt trays open with rather great force and then continue to swing for a time, whereby additional wear occurs. In the case of the resetting device it is important that the tilt trays are returned to the transporting position in the correct sequence, since otherwise the locking mechanism will not be able to keep the transport container closed. Particularly the protruding operating member of the rear tilt tray is an element susceptible to malfunction here. If this member is not adequately accessible, for instance because a product such as an item of clothing becomes caught thereon during a lap, the transport container will not close.

Apparatus and transport container for transport and controller discharge of a load


The inventive carousel-type rotating machine includes a rotating frame bearing several work stations, a power and fluid supply rotating column which is coaxial to the axis of the rotating frame and incorporates a rotatable electric collector connected to a fixed power source for supplying power to the work stations and a rotatable fluid connection connected to a fixed fluid source for supplying fluid to the work stations, wherein the rotatable fluid connection is disposed on the top of the rotating column above the rotatable electric collector, thereby having the reduced diameter of the part thereof rotatable at reduced linear speeds between the fixed and rotatable parts thereof.

It is emphasized here that the invention relates more specifically to rotating machines for manufacturing containers from thermoplastic material, particularly PET, by blow-molding or stretch-blowing a preform (intermediate container) in molds supported on a rotating frame, but the invention can be applied to other types of rotating machines such as filling machines.
FIG. 1 of the attached drawings shows a side view of a rotating electricity and fluid supply column installed at present in some machines for manufacturing containers by blow-molding or stretch-blowing, produced by the applicant (the principal parts of a machine of this type are sketched in a highly schematic way in FIG. 1).
The rotating machine of the carousel type comprises a fixed frame 1 supporting a rotating frame 2 which is rotatable (by the action of means which are not shown) about an axis 3 of rotation. The rotating frame 2 supports a plurality of workstations 4 distributed regularly around the periphery. More specifically, in the example considered here of a stretch-blowing machine for manufacturing containers, particularly bottles from thermoplastic material such as PET, each workstation 4 comprises, in particular, a mold 5, means 6 for controlling the preblowing fluid under relatively medium pressure (typically about 13×105 Pa) and the blowing fluid under relatively high pressure (typically about 40×105 Pa) and a rod 7 for mechanically stretching the container during the blowing, the rod 7 being moved axially by pneumatic actuating means 8 (of the air cylinder type) under relatively low pressure (typically 7×105 Pa).
The machine also has a rotating electricity and fluid supply column 9 which extends coaxially with the axis 3 of rotation of the rotating frame, and which can supply the electricity and the various fluids required for the operation of the workstations 4 from respective fixed sources.
For this purpose, the rotating column 9 comprises a rotating electric collector 10, located at the top of the rotating column 9, which is supplied by a fixed electrical cable 11. In a conventional way, the rotating electric collector has fixed or rotating tracks on which rotating or fixed brushes, respectively, bear resiliently, the assembly being protected by a casing 12, shown in FIG. 1 only, which is fixed and retained by an anti-torque structure 13 (shown schematically in the form of a bracket) fixed to the fixed frame 1.
Below the rotating electric collector 10 there is an axially positioned rotating fluid connection 14, of which only the casing 15, fixed and retained by the anti-torque structure 13, is shown in FIG. 1. The rotating fluid connection 14 is connected to a source of pneumatic fluid under relatively high pressure (generally air at about 40×105 Pa) by a pipe 16 and to a source of pneumatic fluid under relatively low pressure (in practice, air at the industrial pressure of 7×105 Pa) by a pipe 17, the two pipes 16 and 17 being fixed and supported, for example, by the anti-torque structure 13.
The base 18 of the rotating supply column 9, with which it rests on the fixed frame 1, is also fixed. The rotating part, or rotor, of the rotating column 9 is indicated as a whole by the reference 19 in FIG. 1.
The supplies are provided to the workstations in the following manner.
The electrical output cables of the rotating electric collector 10, which are indicated by the reference 20, are fixed to the rotor 19 of the rotating column 9 and, in order to keep them disengaged from the anti-torque structure 13, are made to pass through the rotating fluid connection 14 while being functionally associated with the rotor 19, after which, at the outlet of the rotating fluid connection 14, they are connected to an electrical distribution box 21 supported by the rotating frame used for supplying electricity to the electrical components of workstations (solenoid valves, for example).
The pneumatic fluid is taken from the outlet of the rotating fluid connection 14 through the rotor 19 which is of hollow construction (an example of the structure of the rotating fluid connection 14 is described below with reference to FIGS. 2A and 2B), toward a rotating fluid distributor 22 located under the rotating fluid connection 14. The distributor 22 has a first stage consisting of connections 23, distributed peripherally for the distribution of the pneumatic fluid under low pressure and connected at 24 to the means 8 for actuating the stretching rod 7. The distributor 22 also has a second stage consisting of connections 25 distributed peripherally for the distribution of the pneumatic fluid under high pressure (blowing) and connected at 26 to the aforesaid means 6 for controlling the preblowing and/or blowing fluid. Finally, the distributor 22 also has a third stage consisting of connections 27 distributed peripherally for the distribution of the pneumatic fluid under medium pressure (preblowing) and connected at 28 to the aforesaid means 6 for controlling the preblowing and/or blowing fluid; the fluid under medium pressure (typically 13×105 Pa) is normally obtained by drawing fluid under high pressure at 29 from the corresponding stage of the distributor, this fluid being expanded in a pressure reducer 30 to bring it to the requisite pressure and finally being stored in a buffer reservoir 31 (for example, one incorporated in a structure 66 of the rotor 19 as shown in FIG. 1) which is connected to the aforesaid third stage of connections 27.
Finally, below the buffer reservoir 31, the rotor has a liquid distributor 32 which is designed for distributing the requisite water and oil at 33 and 34 to each workstation, for regulating the temperature of the molds 5 for example.
An assembly flange 63 is provided at the base of the distributor 22 to enable it to be fixed removably to the underlying part 66 of the rotor 19.
In FIGS. 2A and 2B of the attached drawings, the rotating fluid connection 14 is shown in diametric sections taken along two respective perpendicular planes. The fixed outer part or casing 15 is provided with a first radial bore 35, for the admission of fluid under high pressure (arriving from the pipe 16), which opens into a first annular distribution chamber 36, and with a radial opening 37 formed by a second bore, located below the first bore, for the admission of fluid under low pressure (arriving from the pipe 17), which opens into a second annular distribution chamber 38.
Inside the casing 15, the rotating part 39 of the rotating fluid connection 14 (which forms one of the elements of the rotor 19 of the rotating column 9) has a first radial bore 40 facing the first annular distribution chamber 36 of the casing 15 and an axial bore 41 opening into this first radial bore 40 and extending downward toward the underlying rotating fluid distributor 22 (shown in FIG. 1). The rotating part 39 has a second radial bore 42 facing the second annular distribution chamber 38, the said second radial bore 42 opening into the axial bore 41. Finally, a central tube 43 is mounted in the axial bore 41, coaxially with the latter; the central tube 43 has a smaller outside diameter than that of the axial bore 41, in such a way that an annular passage 44 is formed between the central tube 43 and the axial bore 41; additionally, the upper end of the central tube 43 is fixed in a sealed way to the axial bore 41 in the part of the latter located between the two radial bores 40 and 42.
Because of this arrangement, the central tube 43 carries in an axial direction the pneumatic fluid under high pressure delivered by the pipe 16 via the first annular distribution chamber 36 and the first radial bore 40, while the annular passage 44 carries in a peripheral direction the pneumatic fluid under low pressure delivered by the pipe 17 via the second chamber 38 and the second radial bore 42.
As shown in FIG. 2B, drawn in a perpendicular section plane, the rotating part 39 of the rotating fluid connection 14 is also provided with a bore 45 parallel to its axis and to the axial bore 41, but offset radially toward the periphery of the rotating part 39, in such a way that it passes outside the axial bore 41, extending over approximately the whole height of the rotating part 39. The off-centered bore 45 is intended for the passage of the electrical cable or cables 20 which extend from the outlet of the rotating electric collector 10 to the electrical distribution box 21, as mentioned above.
In some cases, the structure is provided with a plurality of bores among which the cables are distributed, instead of being provided with a single off-centered bore 45 for the passage of the cables.
A rotating electricity and fluid supply column 9 designed as described above is currently fitted to many machines manufactured by the applicant, and has proved entirely satisfactory in respect of its function. However, this known column has a number of drawbacks due to its structure, and more specifically due to the relative positions of the rotating electric collector 10 and the rotating fluid connection 14.
Because of the position of the rotating fluid connection 14 located below the rotating electric collector 10, any servicing work carried out on the rotating fluid connection 14 requires the dismantling of the rotating electric collector 10, with all the operations necessitated by this (electrical isolation of the machine, disconnection of the cables, separation of the anti-torque structure, check of the correctness of the connections after reassembly, etc.). In current practice it has been found that servicing is performed relatively rarely on the rotating electric collector 10, whereas the rotating fluid connection requires regular servicing.
One important reason for the servicing work is the need for regular replacement of the seals 46 between the fixed part and the rotating part, which have a relatively short lifespan. Owing to the presence of the off-centered bore or bores 45, the rotating part 39 of the rotating fluid connection has been designed with a relatively large diameter (typically from 110 to 150 mm in the applicant's machines). Consequently, the linear velocity of the rotating part relative to the fixed part is high. Because of this, the seals undergo accelerated mechanical wear.
Furthermore, this high relative velocity causes a relatively intense heating of the seals (whose temperature can be raised to about 100° C., for example). This heating is communicated to the metal parts and particularly to the rotor, which, for reasons described above, is massive and therefore difficult to cool. This unfavorable thermal environment considerably affects the lifespan of the seals.
Moreover, the seals 46 are housed in grooves machined in the wall of the casing 15 (closed groove fitting). Since the seals 46 are made from a relatively rigid material, they must be deformed to their cores in order to fit them, so that they can be inserted into the casing until they reach their respective grooves in which they are subsequently expanded. However, the constituent material of the seals is not resilient, and, when inserted into their grooves, the seals do not easily return to their annular shape, and therefore manual intervention is required in order to shape them correctly.
Consequently, users urgently require improvements to this part of the machine, in order to simplify maintenance and increase the time between services, so that the machines can become more efficient and productive.

Rotating machine with rotating column for electricity and fluid supply


A continuous process for the production of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) is disclosed. According to the process, a liquid feed mixture comprising bis-3-hydroxypropyl terephthalate and/or low molecular weight polyesters of 1,3-propanediol and terephthalic acid, the liquid feed mixture having a mole ratio of propylene groups to terephthalate groups of 1.1 to 2.2 is fed to a flasher. A first stream of gaseous by-products is continuously vaporized and removed from the flasher, and a liquid flasher reaction product having a mole ratio of propylene groups to terephthalate groups of less than about 1.5 is continuously withdrawn from the flasher. The liquid flasher reaction product is continuously fed to a prepolymerizer where it is continuously polymerized to form a poly(trimethylene terephthalate) prepolymer and a second stream of gaseous by-products. Poly(trimethylene terephthalate) prepolymer having a relative viscosity of at least about 5 is continuously withdrawn from the prepolymerizer and continuously fed to a final polymerizer, where it is continuously polymerized to form a higher molecular weight poly(trimethylene terephthalate) and a third stream of gaseous by-products. Higher molecular weight poly(trimethylene terephthalate) having a relative viscosity of at least about 17 is continuously withdrawn from the final polymerizer.

Continuous, four vessel processes for the production of poly(ethylene terephthalate) are known. For example, Sheller, U.S. Pat. No. 3,438,942 discloses a process for the continuous production of poly(ethylene terephthalate) comprising ester exchange followed by three polycondensation steps.
Also known are batch processes for the production of poly(trimethylene terephthalate). For example, Doerr et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,340,909 discloses the production of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) using either an ester exchange reaction starting with lower dialkyl terephthalate ester or direct esterification of terephthalic acid followed by a polycondensation reaction, both of which are carried out in batches using an autoclave.
It would be highly desirable to provide a continuous, four-vessel process for the production of poly(trimethylene terephthalate). It would also be desirable to provide a continuous process for the production of poly(trimethylene terephthalate) in which the production of by-products, such as acrolein and allyl alcohol, is minimized, and in which the molecular weight of the final poly(trimethylene terephthalate) polymer is maximized. The present invention provides such a process.

Continuous process for producing poly (trimethylene terephthalate)


A graphical display system and a method for Z-subdivision of polygons into quadrilaterals and triangles whose vertices are arranged between two adjacent Z planes. This slicing allows both atmospheric and texture parameters to be interpolated linearly with minimal error within each quadrilateral or triangle slice. Object data from a host computer is processed by four pipelined graphics subsystems before being displayed on a display screen. Each object is decomposed into a set of primitives. Each primitive may intersect one or more Z planes thereby producing a set of component portions of the primitive. Once a primitive is sliced into component portions, a texture is mapped onto each component portion by interpolating texture parameters to points on or within the component portion. Finally, the textured component portions are rendered on a display device thereby creating a seamless complete object.

Computer graphics systems are commonly used for displaying graphical objects on a display screen. These graphical objects include points, lines, polygons, and three dimensional solid objects. Using techniques well known in the art, color and surface details can be added to areas and surfaces of objects. One particularly useful technique for adding surface detail to areas or surfaces is texture mapping. Using texture mapping, a pattern image or texture map is combined with an area or surface of an object thereby producing a modified object with the added detail of the texture map. For example, given a flat black solid cube and a texture map defining a wood grain pattern, the texture mapping technique can be used to map the wood grain pattern onto the cube thereby producing a cube that appears to be made of wood. The texture mapping technique is particularly useful as surface detail becomes finer and more intricate thereby rendering the use of geometric primitives less practical.
The effect of texture mapping onto objects can be further improved using filters. Filters are useful for blurring or uniformly reducing the detail of a texture mapped onto an object. Filtering used in this way is particularly useful for modeling the distance that an object is located from the viewer, the effects of atmospheric fog, or the effect of poor lighting. For example, one would expect that an object positioned close to the viewer would appear to have greater detail that an object located some distance away from the viewer. This effect can be created in a computer graphics environment by applying a filter to the more distant object. One limitation in the use of filters in the prior art is the fact that filters typically must be applied uniformly for each of the pixels in an area or surface of an object. This limitation on the use of filters is particularly troublesome for generating and displaying objects where more than one filter level is necessary. For example, a polygon may be generated depicting a road extending into the distance. As expected for a perspective view, the sides of the road would be positioned wide apart in the foreground and converging to a point in the distance. Texture mapping may be used to apply an asphalt surface to the road object. A viewer would expect, however, to see finer detail of the road texture in the foreground versus the road texture in the distance. In order to appropriately model this perspective view, a fine detail filter should be used in the foreground of the road object, and a coarse detail filter should be used in the more distant region of the road object. Further realism may be achieved by using a plurality of filters at intermediate points of the road object from the nearest point to the furthest point. Typically, however, prior art systems have been unable to apply more than one filter to a single area or surface.
One way used in the prior art for applying variations in the detail of a texture mapped onto an object is to apply a filter to each pixel of an area or surface of the object. In this way, complete control over the rendering of an object can be achieved. Unfortunately, however, the use of a separate filtering computation for each pixel is very computationally expensive. Use of the pixel filtering technique requires extremely fast and typically expensive hardware. In some situations for large and complex objects, the use of the pixel filtering technique may not be possible for generating the object within the allowable time constraints. Thus, a better technique is needed for applying variant filter levels to a graphical object.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a technique for applying various filter levels to areas and surfaces of a single object. If is further an object of the present invention to provide a means for applying various filter levels to areas and surfaces of an object without requiring an expensive filter computation on a per pixel basis. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a means and method for applying atmospheric and texture parameter variations to an object based on its distance from the eye of a viewer.

Z-subdivision for improved texture mapping


A battery connector system includes a connector receptacle having a housing, the connector receptacle positioned on a battery pack having a positive battery lead and a negative battery lead, a first wire and a second wire coupled to the connector receptacle, the first wire and the second wire extending from the housing to connect the connector receptacle with the positive battery lead and the negative battery lead, and a connector plug positioned in an electronic device. The connector receptacle includes integral alignment features for mating with the connector plug upon insertion of the battery pack into the electronic device and may be attached to the battery pack by an adhesive bond. The connector plug is float connected to the electronic device.

Batteries are frequently used in electronic systems as either a primary source of power, or as a backup source of power, such as in an uninterruptible power supply system. Although a single battery can be employed to power some systems, it is not uncommon for an electronic device to require a battery pack containing as few as two batteries or as many as twelve batteries. Generally, batteries contained in a battery pack are lead acid batteries bonded together. The battery pack is manually connected to the electronic system by an assembler, who may have to remove from the connector the leads of the used battery, and thereafter attach to the connector the leads of the new battery. To avoid injury to the user and damage to the system from a faulty battery or from potentially live battery leads, great care must be taken in connecting or replacing a battery in an electronic device, since battery leads often require manual release and reconnection. This often requires that the system be powered down for a substantial amount of time so that the battery leads are appropriately connected. In an uninterruptible power supply, substantial downtime is undesirable.
Connector systems that do not require manual intervention to replace the battery are known. Components for battery connector systems are available for connecting battery packs to electronic devices. These systems are often useful in high-end battery packs containing between four and twelve batteries, as the connector systems are expensive.