Resin-Molded Camera Lens Integration for Water-Tightness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Automobile rearview cameras face challenges in maintaining water-tightness due to gaps between constituent elements, allowing dust, foreign objects, and moisture to permeate, which existing solutions like O-rings attempt to address but are not entirely effective.
Innovation Solution
The camera design integrates a molding unit made of resin that covers the lens unit, image sensor, and cable, eliminating coupling seams and additional parts like O-rings, ensuring a seamless and moisture-proof assembly by molding these components together without gaps.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If O-rings are used to seal gaps between camera components, then water-tightness is improved, but device complexity increases and manufacturing precision requirements worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the housing and lens assembly into a single integrated structure where the lens is directly mounted on the housing without separate coupling components. This eliminates gaps that would require O-rings, achieving water-tightness through structural integration rather than additive sealing components.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent removes O-rings and other sealing components from the camera assembly by designing a housing-lens interface that inherently prevents moisture ingress through precise geometric fitting and continuous material surfaces, eliminating the need for separate sealing elements.
2Ease of manufacture
If multiple separate components are used to form the camera body, then ease of manufacture is improved, but water-tightness worsens due to coupling gaps
Solution Approach 1:
The housing and lens assembly are merged into a single integrated component manufactured as one piece, eliminating coupling gaps between separate parts. This integration maintains ease of manufacture through moldable resin construction while inherently preventing moisture ingress at the lens-housing interface.
3Reliability
If resin molding is used to integrate parts, then water-tightness is improved by eliminating gaps, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces mechanical assembly with multiple discrete components and sealing elements with a single resin-molded integrated structure. This substitution eliminates the need for mechanical coupling and sealing components, achieving water-tightness through the monolithic nature of the molded housing-lens assembly.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach enhances water-tightness efficiency and productivity by reducing the number of parts and eliminating pathways for moisture ingress, thereby improving the camera's adhesiveness and air-tightness.
Implementation Method 1
a molding unit for exposing the lens of the lens unit and for integrating the parts without any coupling seams
Data Source
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AI summary
A camera and a method for manufacturing the camera are disclosed, the camera including parts including a lens unit formed with at least one lens for concentrating an image of an outside object, and an image sensor for converting the image of the outside object concentrated in the lens to an electric signal; and a molding unit for exposing the lens of the lens unit and for integrating the parts without any coupling seams.