Portable laser diode scanning head

Claim 1

In a laser scanning system for reading symbols, a laser scanning head comprising: (a) a generally gun-shaped housing including a hollow barrel portion, and means for detachably and interchangeably mounting one of a set of hollow handle portions to the barrel portion; (b) means including an actuatable laser light source mounted in the barrel portion and operative, when actuated, for generating an incident laser beam; (c) optic means mounted in the barrel portion for optically forming and directing said incident laser beam toward a reference plane located exteriorly of the housing, and to a symbol located in a working distance range in the vicinity of the reference plane, thereby reflecting off the symbol reflected laser light, at least a returning portion of which travels away from the symbol back toward the head; (d) scanning means mounted in the barrel portion for scanning the symbol in a scan across the symbol, said returning portion of said reflected laser light having a variable intensity over the scan; (e) sensor means mounted in the barrel portion for detecting the variable intensity of said returning portion of said reflected laser light over a field of view, and for generating an electrical analog signal indicative of the detected variable light intensity; (f) said scanning means being operative for scanning at least one of said incident laser beam and said field of view; (g) signal processing means mounted in the barrel portion for processing the analog electrical signal, and for generating a digitized signal indicative of the symbol; (h) decode means mounted in said one handle portion and operative for decoding the digitized signal to data descriptive of the symbol being read; (i) manually-actuatable trigger means on the housing and operatively connected to, and operative for actuating, the laser beam generating means, optic means, scanning means, sensor means and decode means to initiate a reading of the symbol upon manual actuation of the trigger means by the user, said trigger means being actuatable for each symbol to be read, each symbol in its respective turn; and (j) an electrical interlock between the barrel portion and said one handle portion and operative for electrically connecting the decode means in said one handle portion to the signal processing means in the barrel portion when said one handle portion is mounted on the latter.