Abstract: An interior body is housed in a tubular exterior body. The interior body includes a spring portion, a movable portion, and a fixing portion, which are integrated together. Elastic arms are disposed on the movable portion so as to extend downward. Each elastic arm includes, at a lower end portion, an elastically pressing portion, which is elastically pressed against a tubular internal surface of the exterior body. Since the elastically pressing portion is elastically pressed against the exterior body, electric signals are more likely to flow between the movable portion and the exterior body and more likely to be prevented from leaking to the spring portion.

Abstract: A vehicular operating device includes an operating member manipulated to swing, a slider slidably fitted in a holding bore, a cam surface positioned in front of the slider, and a helical compression spring pressing the slider into pressure contact with the cam surface. The metal-made slider includes a first outer peripheral surface with a diameter being smaller than an inner diameter of the helical compression spring, and a guide portion with an outer diameter allowing the guide portion to slide along an inner peripheral surface of the holding bore. A resin-made annular spacer having an outer diameter substantially equal to that of the guide portion is fitted between the guide portion and the helical compression spring. The helical compression spring biases the slider through the annular spacer. The annular spacer holds the helical compression spring in a state not contacting the first outer peripheral surface and the guide portion.

Abstract: A density unevenness reduction method of a printing apparatus having a sheet transport mechanism which transmits a driving force of a driving device to a roller via a plurality of gears to drive the roller for transporting a sheet, the method includes: assuming one tooth and one turn of each of the gears each to be a simple harmonic oscillation of a single sine wave, and generating a synthesized wave of the sine waves of the gears; and adjusting the module and the number of teeth of each of the gears, thereby dispersing a frequency at which the oscillations of the gears overlap and are amplified in the synthesized wave.

Abstract: A contact probe includes a probe tip and a damper. The probe tip includes a first barrel, a probe pin, and a first spring. The first barrel has a cavity with a bottom, an opening being disposed in a first end of the first barrel and the bottom being disposed at a second end of the first barrel. The probe pin is mounted in the first barrel so as to be movable forward and backward. The first spring is mounted in the cavity for elastically biasing the probe pin towards the opening. The damper is mounted to the second end of the first barrel, and elastically supports the first barrel.

Abstract: The invention provides a light guide member and an illuminating device which are able to efficiently uniformly irradiate illumination light to only an area requiring illumination. Therefore, a reflection face is constructed by reflection stripes such as many grooves, etc. widened in a concentric circle shape. Light from a light source unit is widened toward this entire reflection face without irregularities by a diffusing portion such as a reflection prism, etc. Thus, only the range actually requiring the illumination can be illuminated without irregularities, and visibility of the illumination range using a front light is raised.

Abstract: Force in a direction opposite to an operating direction imparted from a motor to a rotary knob is increased gradually at the start of an operation to an upper limit value with the increase of a rotating angle of the rotary knob in the same direction as the operating direction, and is gradually decreased at the finish of the operation from the upper limit value to 0 with the increase of the rotating angle in the opposite direction to the operating direction. In consequence, when the operation is stopped before or at the time at which force in the opposite direction to the operating direction imparted to the rotary knob reaches the upper value, the rotary knob returns to the angle at which it has existed before operated, and can come to halt without oscillation.

Abstract: A high-quality image is recorded in precise correspondence with the image information of a document sensed by an image scanner without producing an error in gray level. Control means performs a gray level correction on the image information sensed by the image scanner in accordance with the surface gray level information of a reference plate which has been sensed in advance by the image scanner thereby generating recording information corrected in gray level, wherein the gray level correction is performed when the recording information is generated from the image information thereby making compensation not only for the shading error but also for gray level errors due to other factors so that an image is recorded in exact correspondence with the sensed image information of the document without having an error in gray level.