text: 1. Field of the Invention
  The present invention relates to a device capable of cleaning the surface of a component such as an optical sensor of the detection device or the surface of the head of a recording/reproducing device that are necessary to be always cleaned. More particularly, the present invention relates to an optical detection device provided with the cleaning device of the type described above. Furthermore, the present invention relates to a paper sheet depositing/dispensing apparatus provided with a plurality of the optical detection devices of the type described above.
  2. Description of the Prior Art
  Previously, components such as an optical sensor of the detection device whose surfaces need to be protected from contamination have been manually and directly cleaned.
  When the optical sensor and the like is intended to be cleaned of contaminates, the device in which the optical sensor or the like, is incorporated must be disassembled. Therefore, a problem arises in that the cleaning operator takes an excessively long time and is complicated. In particular, an automatic cash depositing/dispensing apparatus is provided with a plurality of optical sensors for the purpose of switching the conveyance passages for the bank notes, detecting the state of the conveyance of the bank notes, and detecting the number of the bank notes which have been conveyed. However, the cleaning operation is excessively long due to the construction of apparatus employing the plurality of optical sensors. In addition, the overall cleaning operations is too complicated.
  A device for cleaning an objective lens of the optical head is disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 62-24449 wherein a brush, disposed at the front end of an arm, sweeps the surface of the objective lens of the optical head whenever the disk is loaded into the apparatus or is ejected from the same. Therefore, the cleaning operation is limited to only once when the disk is inserted or ejected, causing the obtainable cleaning effect to be insufficient. Furthermore, the cleaning operation cannot be conducted individually from the operation of the apparatus. Furthermore, the construction required to include a plurality of components that must be cleaned is generally very complicated. Yet another problem resides in the fact that the complicated construction results in difficulty in the handling of the apparatus.