DEVICE FOR ADJUSTING FOCAL POINT OF AN OPTICAL PICKUP DEVICE

摘要

A device for adjusting the focal point of an optical pickup device in which the light reflected by a recording medium is focused at points of two systems using an optical branching filter, first and second light detectors are disposed, respectively, in front of one focal point and at the back of the other focal point, and a focal point adjusting mechanism is servo-controlled in response to the outputs from the two light detectors. Each of the light detectors has a central light-receiving surface on the optical axis and a peripheral light-receiving surface in the periphery of the central light-receiving surface. According to a first method, the focal point adjusting mechanism is servo-controlled such that the deviation will become zero between the ratio of the amount of light received in the center to the total amount of light received in the center and periphery of the first light detector and the ratio of the amount of light in the center to the total amount of light in the center and periphery of the second light detector. Even if the two detectors receive different amounts of light, the difference is cancelled between the denominator and the numerator of the ratio of the amount of light in the center to the total amount of light in the center and periphery, and the device is not affected by the imbalance in the amount of light. According to a second method, the focal point adjusting mechanism is basically servo-controlled based on the difference between the amounts of light received in the centers of the two light detectors. Here, the difference in the total amount of light received by the two light detectors is calculated throughout all stages, and the difference is used to calculate a correction value multiplied by the component ratio of the amount of light in the center to the total amount of the light received in a focused condition. Since the calculated correction value is subtracted from the difference in the amount of light received in the centers, the servo output does not contain imbalance in the amount of light falling on the light detectors of the two systems, and the device is not affected by the imbalance in the amount of incident light.