Appeal No. 1998-1644
Application No. 08/494,516
to overlap a wear region of the ring gear teeth. Ring gear teeth in the wear region have
been worn because of engagement with the starter pinion. By not permitting the sensor to
output signals based on ring gear teeth which are in the wear region, detection precision of
the rotation angle is said to be improved.
Representative independent claim 1 is reproduced as follows:
1. An apparatus for continuously detecting a rotation angle in a specific
range of a crankshaft of an engine, said engine having a piston reciprocating
between a top dead center and bottom dead center, comprising:
a ring gear having teeth and coupled with said crankshaft,
a starter motor for rotating said ring gear,
a starter pinion coupled with said motor, said pinion having teeth to
be engaged with said ring gear teeth when starting up said engine,
a magnetic sensor for outputting a signal according to the passing of
teeth in a specific range of said ring gear, said specific range being set so
as not to overlap with a wear region of said ring gear teeth which is worn due
to engagement with said pinion, and
means for detecting a rotation angle of said crankshaft based on said
signal.
The examiner relies on the following references:
Lotterbach et al. (Lotterbach) 4,700,305 Oct. 13, 1987
Hmelovsky et al. (Hmelovsky) 4,707,791 Nov. 17, 1987
2
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