JPH0721186Y2 - Melody spoon or fork - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial field of application] The present invention relates to a spoon or fork for a meal, and more specifically, a melody sound is generated each time the food is scooped and put into the mouth, which may be of interest to young children. It relates to a new spoon or fork that can have.

[Prior art]

Conventionally, as a spoon or a fork for generating a melody sound, the invention of "Sounding unit for hand-held food appliances" in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 64-14077 and the invention described in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 63-118863 have been proposed. In all of these, the melody sounds for the first time when a switch such as a spoon or a fork is gripped or when the switch is pressed.

[Problems to be solved]

The above-mentioned conventional melody spoon produces a melody regardless of the action of eating, that is, the action of bringing food to the mouth, and the melody is produced only each time the switch is pressed. Therefore, at first, I'm unusually interested, but
There was a problem of getting tired soon.

Therefore, in view of such problems of the conventional spoon or fork with a melody, the present invention aims to provide a dynamic melody spoon or fork that plays a melody each time the spoon or fork is carried to the mouth.
The following structure is adopted to achieve the purpose.

[Means for Solving the Problems]

That is, a melody generator 6 is provided inside the handle portion 2 in a spoon or fork consisting of the handle portion 2 and a metallic tip portion 3 that is inserted into and removed from the mouth of a person who is connected to the handle portion and the handle is provided. A conductive touch surface 11 provided on at least a part of the surface of the portion 2 and the tip portion 3 electrically separated from the touch surface 11 via an insulating means are included in the melody generator 6. When a starter terminal is formed and the person's hand and mouth contact the touch surface 11 and the tip portion 3, respectively, and the pair of starter terminals is short-circuited,
It is characterized in that the melody generator 6 is activated to generate a melody sound.

[Action]

When the handle portion of the spoon or fork of the present invention is grasped by hand and the tip portion is put into the mouth while touching the touch surface, the touch surface and the tip portion are short-circuited through the human body. Since the touch surface and the tip portion respectively form the activation terminals of the melody generator, the melody generator is activated by the short circuit between them and a melody sound is generated. Therefore, a melody sound is generated each time the tip portion is put into the mouth, which strongly attracts the interest of infants and the like and does not get tired even when used for a long time. Furthermore, if a melody generator in which several types of melody are repeated in sequence is used, the music can be made more interesting (the song changes each time the tip is put in the mouth).

〔Example〕

 Next, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a sectional view schematically showing an example of a spoon according to the present invention. The spoon 1 comprises a handle 2 and a metal tip 3 connected to the handle 2. The handle portion 2 is composed of a metal cylinder body 4 and a coupling portion 5 screwed to one end thereof, and a melody generator 6 is provided inside the cylinder body 4.

The melody generator 6 is composed of a melody generating circuit 7, a battery 8 and a sound generator 9. The melody generating circuit 7 and the battery 8 are mounted on the printed board 10, and their negative terminals are connected to the metal cylinder 4 through the board 10. The surface of the cylindrical body 4 forms a conductive touch surface 11. Further, the sounding device 9 is attached to the end portion of the cylindrical body 4 on the side opposite to the connecting side of the tip portion 3.

The melody generation circuit 7 is an integrated circuit for downsizing (for example, SVM7903CBR ... Seiko Epson, M1220 ... NPC)
Is preferably used. The battery 8 can be a small alkaline button battery or the like used for a watch, and the sounder 9 can be a small sounding element using a piezoelectric element, for example.

The tubular body 4 can be made, for example, by die-casting aluminum or processing a metal pipe such as aluminum or brass. In this way, when the entire tubular body 4 is made of a conductive metal material, the entire surface of the tubular body 4 becomes the touch surface 11. However, the tubular body 4 can also be made of an insulating material such as synthetic resin. When made of an insulating material, the touch surface 11 can be made by coating the entire surface of the cylindrical body 4 or at least the surface of the portion to be gripped with a hand with a conductive material such as metal by pasting or the like. In that case, the substrate 10 needs to be electrically connected to the touch surface 11 for grounding. The shaft fixing portion 13 can be made of any insulating material such as synthetic resin. That is, this shaft fixing part
Reference numeral 13 constitutes an insulating means for sufficiently electrically insulating and separating the distance between the outer surfaces of the metallic tip portion 3 and the conductive touch surface 11.

The tip portion 3 of the spoon can have its shaft portion 12 fixed to the shaft fixing portion 13 by insert molding or the like, and the coupling portion 5 can fix the shaft fixing portion 13 and the tubular body 4.

It is preferable that an O-ring is inserted between the cylindrical body 4 and the shaft fixing portion 13 and the sound generator 9 and that their connecting portions are liquid-tightly fixed by an adhesive.

FIG. 2 is an example of a circuit diagram of the melody generator 6. The melody generating circuit 7 is composed of a touch sensor amplifier 15 and a melody circuit 16, and a battery 8 supplies a voltage of DC1.5V to these circuits. The touch sensor amplifier 15 is, for example, a PNP
It is composed of a transistor Tr and resistors R1 and R2, and two terminals 17 and 18 of its input portion form a starting terminal. When the activation terminals are short-circuited, the output of the PNP transistor Tr becomes high level, the melody circuit 16 is activated, and the sound generator 9 connected to the output side is activated. The melody circuit 16 can use a commercially available melody IC as it is. Commercial Melody
There are single-melody and multi-melody melody as IC,
Either IC can be used in the present invention. An IC that outputs multiple types of melody outputs different melody in sequence each time it is activated, that is, each time the activation terminals are short-circuited.

One terminal 17 forming the activation terminal is constituted by the tip 3 of the spoon and the other terminal 18 is said conductive touch surface 11
It is composed of

Next, the operation of the spoon will be described. If you hold the handle 2 of the spoon with your hand and scoop food with the tip 3 of the spoon and put it in your mouth, the short circuit will occur between the activation terminals through the human body. Therefore, the output of the touch sensor amplification unit 15 becomes high level, the melody circuit 16 is activated, and the melody is output from the sound generator 9. Even if the tip 3 of the spoon is released from the mouth in this state, by using the one-shot melody IC,
The melody is output until one song ends.

Also, even with it in your mouth, it ends with one song.

Since the melody is output every time the tip 3 of the spoon is put in the mouth in this way, the interest of the infant or the like can be kept constant. Also, as mentioned above, the melody IC
When using a melody output of multiple tunes, it is possible to make it more interesting.

It should be noted that although the explanation so far has been made on the spoon, it goes without saying that the fork can be similarly configured.

[Effect of device]

As described above, the present invention outputs a melody every time the tip 3 of the spoon is put in the mouth, which can cause a strong interest in food for infants and the like and can maintain the interest for a long time.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a sectional view schematically showing an example of the melody spoon according to the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a circuit diagram of a melody generator 6 provided in the cylindrical body 4 shown in FIG. 1 ... spoon, 2 ... handle part, 3 ... end part 4 ... cylindrical body, 5 ... combining part 6 ... melody generator, 7 ... melody generating circuit 8 ... battery, 9 ... sound generator , 10 ...... Base 11 ...... Touch surface, 12 ...... Shaft part 13 ...... Axis fixing part, 14 ...... Contact piece 15 ...... Touch sensor amplification part 16 ...... Melody circuit, 17 ...... terminal, 18 ...... terminal

Claims (1)

[Scope of utility model registration request] 1. A melody generator 6 inside the handle 2 in a spoon or fork comprising a handle 2 and a metal tip 3 which is inserted into and removed from a mouth of a person who is connected to the handle 2.
And a conductive touch surface 11 provided on at least a part of the surface of the handle portion 2, and the tip portion 3 electrically separated from the touch surface 11 via insulating means. When a pair of activation terminals of the generator 6 are formed, and the hand and mouth of the person who eats contact the touch surface 11 and the tip portion 3, respectively, and the pair of activation terminals is short-circuited. A melody spoon or a fork characterized in that the melody generator 6 is activated to generate a melody sound.