Patent ID: 8482590

Claim:
An optical scanning device comprising: a housing; a light source that emits a light beam; a rotatable polygon mirror that receives the light beam from the light source while rotating and deflects the light beam by reflecting the light beam in a direction corresponding to an angle of rotation thereof; a scanning optical system that guides the light beam from the rotatable polygon mirror to a scanning object in such a manner as to repeatedly scan the scanning object with the light beam; first and second reflective mirrors one of which is provided inside a deflection area within which the light beam is deflected by the rotatable polygon mirror; and a photodetector that receives the light beam reflected by the one of the first and second reflective mirrors and detects the timing of scanning of the scanning object with the light beam, wherein the scanning object is one of first and second scanning objects, and wherein the housing includes a first support configured to support the first reflective mirror at a first position that is outside a first scan-use area and inside a second scan-use area, the first scan-use area being used for the scanning of the first scanning object and being narrower than the second scan-use area that is used for the scanning of the second scanning object, the first reflective mirror being supported in such a manner as to reflect the light beam toward the photodetector; and a second support configured to support the second reflective mirror at a second position that is outside the second scan-use area, the second reflective mirror being supported in such a manner as to reflect the light beam toward the photodetector, wherein the first and second supports are provided at such respective positions that the first reflective mirror to be supported by the first support and the second reflective mirror to be supported by the second support overlap each other, and only one of the first and second reflective mirrors is supportable by a corresponding one of the first and second supports.