Patent Application
20100096484
1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a shredder and, in particular, to lock elements that prevent the rotary shafts of a shredder from bending.
2. Related Art
To prevent such documents as legal files, receipts, invoices, credit card numbers, research reports, or personal financial information (e.g., credit card and phone bills) from being released, it is common to destroy them using a shredder. Therefore, the shredder has become an indispensable device for both business and home applications.
A usual shredder includes a housing, a paper inlet on the front surface of the housing for inserting paper, and a shredder mechanism disposed inside the housing for shredding paper. The shredder mechanism includes cutting blades mounted on two parallel rotary shafts driven by a motor and a gearbox, thereby cutting passing paper into stripes or chips.
Any given shredder has a sheet capacity according to its motor load and the strengths of the cutting blades and rotary shafts. When a lot of paper needs to be destroyed, the user has to follow the sheet capacity when inserting paper. Otherwise, inserting too much paper at a time can easily cause a paper jam. Moreover, the rotary shafts may bend when it is overloaded. If no appropriate supporting components are provided on the outer sides of the rotary shafts to balance the bending moment, the rotary shafts may even break, making the shredder out of order.
Therefore, to prevent the rotary shafts from bending under a large external force, it is necessary to provide appropriate supporting components on the outer sides of the rotary shafts.
In view of the foregoing, an objective of the invention is to provide lock elements for preventing the rotary shafts of the shredder from bending.
To achieve the above-mentioned objective, the disclosed lock element includes fixing ends and a supporting arm. The fixing end is used to fix with the paper guiding chips of the shredder mechanism. The supporting arm strides and urges on the outer side of the shredder mechanism. In practice, the lock elements are used in pairs and symmetrically fixed on the paper guiding chips. They form a pinching effect on the shredder mechanism to prevent the-rotary shafts from bending.
The invention will become more fully understood from the detailed description given herein below illustration only, and thus is not limitative of the present invention, and wherein:
The present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein the same references relate to the same elements.
As shown in
If the user inserts too much paper into the paper inlet of the shredder and the paper enters the shredder mechanism, the cutting blades 11 may stop due to a paper jam. In this case, the rotary shafts 13 bend outward due to overloading. If no appropriate supporting components are provided on the outer sides of the rotary shafts 13 to balance the bending moment, the rotary shafts 13 may even break, making the shredder out of order.
Please refer to
In practice, the lock elements 20 are used in pairs and fixed to the paper guiding chips 30 in a symmetrical way. They form a pinching effect on the shredder mechanism 10 to prevent the rotary shafts 13 from bending. At least one pair of the lock elements 20 is required. More pairs can be used in necessary.
Although the invention has been described with reference to specific embodiments, this description is not meant to be construed in a limiting sense. Various modifications of the disclosed embodiments, as well as alternative embodiments, will be apparent to persons skilled in the art. It is, therefore, contemplated that the appended claims will cover all modifications that fall within the true scope of the invention.
