Patent Application
20070135033
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a fan rack, and more particularly, to a fan rack fixture having two pairs of positioning and locking portions for fixing a fan rack to a housing of an electronic device.
2. Description of Related Art
With rapid development of electronic products, people's life is becoming more and more comfortable by such various electronic devices. Specially, computer industry is making an increasing progress with the work frequency, which easily increases the temperature of the electronic components (for example, CPU, hard disk, display card and so on). Therefore, a pocket fan has become one of the most popular heat sinks and has been widely applied in an electronic device, e.g., a computer, a server and the like.
Taken the application in server for example, Taiwan Patent No. 584,264 proposed a heat dissipating configuration for server, which is configured in an inner part of a host housing, which is divided into a first containing space and a second containing space. The first containing space is used to contain data access device. The second containing space is provided a clapboard, one side of which is configured a mainboard and an intake, and the other side of which is at least provided a heat dissipating configuration. An air vent is installed at the housing of the heat dissipating configuration and is corresponding to the intake. A fan and an airflow structure configured in the housing can dissipate the heat source produced by the mainboard through the intake and air vent.
The above patent proposed a configured structure related to the server, and further proposed a removable fan module for loading fan and airflow structure by the housing, but the removable fan module occupies setting space of the power supply, which is no doubt to decrease the extended function for the server. Furthermore, in order to maintain setting space and the corresponding number for the power supply, the integral width of the server must be increased, which departs from the developing trend for miniaturization of various electronic devices, and due to the addition of width, it can not be applied in a machine cabinet or modular machine room with general specifications, universality of the product is relatively deduced.
Taiwan Patent No. 584,246 proposed another fast fan rack fixture for heat dissipating fan of the server, the fan rack fixture includes fixing base that is stenciled in the center, the stenciled is divided into at least a containing chamber with suitable space through a clapboard, the containing chambers is respectively provided through holes that are opposite to one another at the surface of the both opposite side walls in the base, and at least one heat dissipating fan can be respectively placed in the containing chambers exactly. Meanwhile, making the uptake exactly opposite to the through hole, and respectively disposing a fixing component that is able of tabling quickly at the vertical cross in one side of the adjacent clapboard, a locating groove is formed by the fixing components and one side wall surface of the fixing base, then by virtue of the locating groove of the fixing base, the fan can be directly tumbled in at least one the other fixing component installed at the corresponding position of a server housing, thereby the effect for disassembling and assembling the heat dissipating fans quickly can be obtained.
The fixing components are composed of slim vertical spring arms, a pulling portion is installed vertical to the direction of the locating groove on the top of the spring arms, the side wall of the spring arms towards the direction of the locating groove and corresponding to one side wall of the fixing base are respectively provided bulges that are opposite to one another. The other fixing components are composed of vertical hollow locating posts with U-shaped portion, both side walls of the locating post are provided a locating hole. The other fixing components can be installed on the housing of server, and between the interface circuit board and a rectifier before a power supply.
The above patent proposes a fixing base (fan rack) for disposing a plurality of heat dissipating fans, the fixing base and the housing of the server are assembled and disassembled through the fixing components installed at the relative positions of the fixing base and the housing of the server. Although the above patent has provided the assembling and disassembling design for the fixing base, structures of the fixing component and the other fixing component are too complex, and aligning steps for assembly are also not easy, specially, the inner of the server housing are full of many setting components and layouts, it is quite difficult and inconvenient to disassemble and assemble whether using tools or not in the limited space of the inner of the server housing, thus, it is needed improving.
In addition, if the above-discussed fixing component is changed to the screw locking design, additional tools are required employing to lock or withdraw the screws when assembling or disassembling the fixing base, which makes the assembling and disassembling process waste long time, during the assembling process, it tends to affect by the circumstance and cause that the screws are dropped to the inner of the server housing or lost, thereby resulting in the process for assembling and disassembling inconveniently and slowly.
Accordingly, there exists a strong need in the art for a fan rack fixture, so as to assemble and disassemble quickly and conveniently without tools.
Accordingly, it is a primary objective of the present invention to solve the drawbacks of the aforementioned conventional technology by providing a fan rack fixture, which is capable of assembling/disassembling a fan rack to/from a housing of an electronic device even without any tool.
It is another objective of the present invention to provide a fan rack fixture, which is capable of assembling/disassembling the fan rack to/from the housing of the electronic device quickly and conveniently.
In order to attain the object mentioned above and the others, a fan rack fixture for fixing a fan rack to a housing of an electronic device is provided according to the present invention. The fan rack fixture includes a first positioning portion installed on a first side of the fan rack, a first locking portion installed on a first side of the housing for fixing the first positioning portion, a second positioning portion installed on a second side of the fan rack and opposite to the first positioning portion, and a second locking portion installed on a second side of the housing for fixing the second positioning portion. By virtue of the fan rack fixture, the fan rack can be assembled/disassembled to/from the housing of the electronic device, even without the use of any tool.
Preferably, the first positioning portion includes an L-shaped sheet, and the first locking portion includes a first opening for fixing the L-shaped sheet of the first positioning portion, the first opening having a width larger than a thickness of the L-shaped sheet. The second positioning portion includes a hook and a second opening. The second locking portion includes a slot and a jack. The fan rack fixture further includes a spring portion and an adjusting portion. Preferably, the spring portion is a leaf spring, and has a limiting stopper. The limiting stopper can be a bulge or has other equivalent structures. The adjusting portion includes an adjusting opening for the spring portion to pass, and a movable opening installed adjacent to the adjusting opening.
Compared with the prior art, the fan rack fixture according to the present invention does not employ any tools when assembling/disassembling a fan rack to/from a housing of an electronic device. That is, the assembly/disassembly of the fan rack to/from the housing of the electronic device can be completed manually, thereby solving the problems, such that structures of the fixing component and the other fixing component are too complex, and aligning steps for assembly are also not easy, specially, the inner of the server housing are full of many setting components and layouts, it is quite difficult and inconvenient to disassemble and assemble in the limited space of the inner of the server housing, in the conventional technology.
Applications of the present invention can assemble and disassemble quickly and conveniently merely by using simply operation, thereby solving the drawbacks, such that additional tools are required employing to lock or withdraw screws, which makes the assembling and disassembling process waste long time, during the assembling process, it tends to affect by the circumstance and cause that the screws are dropped to the inner of the server housing or lost, thereby resulting in the process for assembling and disassembling inconveniently and slowly, in the conventional technology.
Moreover, the present invention can be applied in fan rack, electronic device and its housing with the existing specifications, thereby avoiding the problems, such that in order to maintain setting space and the corresponding number for the power supply, the integral width of the server must be increased, which departs from the developing trend for miniaturization of various electronic devices, and due to the addition of width, it can not be applied in a machine cabinet or modular machine room with general specifications, universality of the product is relatively deduced, in the conventional technology. Furthermore, the present invention can be applied in fan rack, electronic device and housing with the existing and new specifications, it has much more spring in design. As described above, the fan rack fixture according to the present invention can assemble and disassemble quickly and conveniently without tools, so as to solve various drawbacks of the conventional technology, which makes the present invention have significantly high value in use of the industry.
The following illustrative embodiments are provided to illustrate the disclosure of the present invention, these and other advantages and effects can be apparent to those skilled in the art after reading the disclosure of this specification. The present invention can also be performed or applied by other different embodiments. The details of the specification may be on the basis of different points and applications, and numerous modifications and variations can be devised without departing from the spirit of the present invention.
The fan rack fixture comprises a first positioning portion 1, a first locking portion 2, a second positioning portion 3 and a second locking portion 4.
Please refer to
With reference to
With reference to
It should be noted that the first opening 21, the second opening 33, the adjusting opening 61, the movable opening 63, the slot 41 and the jack 43 in the preferred embodiment are all assumed to have a rectangular structure, but which can be changed in the other embodiment. Certainly, the part that is correspondingly bonded to or fixed the above opening, slot or jack should be changed correspondingly, which are easy for those skilled in the art to change, so it will not be described accompanying the drawings again.
When the fan rack 10 is needed to be fixed to the housing 201 of the electronic device 20, as shown in
Accordingly, through fixing the first positioning portion 1 to the first locking portion 2 and fixing the second positioning portion 1 to the second locking portion 2, the fan rack 10 can be fixed to the housing 201 of the electronic device 20.
When the fan rack 10 is needed to be disassembled from the housing 201 of the electronic device 20, as shown in
Compared with the prior art, the fan rack fixture according to the present invention can perform operation of assembly and disassembly without tools, thereby solving the problems, such that structures are too complex, and aligning steps for assembly are also quite difficult, specially, the inner of the server housing are full of setting components and layouts, it is quite difficult and inconvenient to disassemble and assemble in the limited space of the inner of the server housing, in the conventional technology.
Meanwhile, application of the present invention can assemble and disassemble quickly and conveniently merely by using simply operation, thereby solving the drawbacks, such that additional tools are required employing to lock or withdraw screws, which makes the assembling and disassembling process waste long time, during the assembling process, it tends to affect by the circumstance and cause that the screws are dropped to the inner of the server housing or lost, thereby resulting in the process for assembling and disassembling inconveniently and slowly, in the conventional technology.
In addition, the present invention can be applied in fan rack, electronic device and its housing with the existing specifications, thereby avoiding the problems, such that in order to maintain setting space and the corresponding number for the power supply, the integral width of the server must be increased, which departs from the developing trend for miniaturization of various electronic devices and causes that the server can not be applied in a machine cabinet or modular machine room with general specifications, universality of the product is relatively deduced, in the conventional technology. Furthermore, the present invention can be applied in fan rack, electronic device and its housing not only with the existing specifications, but also with new design specifications, the present invention in deed has much more spring in design than the conventional technology.
Therefore, the fan rack fixture according to the present invention in deed can solve various drawbacks of the conventional technology, operation of assembly and disassembly can be performed without tools by applying the present invention, and such operation also can be performed quickly and conveniently, which makes the present invention have significantly high value in use of the industry.
What described above is to describe the exemplary preferred embodiment of the fan rack fixture according to the present invention, it is not limited the scope of the essential technical content according to the present invention, the essential technical content is broadly defined in the appended claim, if the exemplary embodiments or method implemented by any one are completely identical to the following claim or only an equivalent change of the following claim, all that is considered to fall with the scope of the invention.
