FR2723182A1 - VERTICAL REFRIGERATOR WITH IMPROVED DOOR CLOSURE - Google Patents

Abstract

The refrigeration appliance comprises at least one compartment closed by at least one sliding door (1) horizontally on suitable sliding elements (4) associated with a corresponding guide (5) arranged on the upper (2) and / or lower (8) edges. ) Door. This door can be closed automatically. The guide (5) is fixed on the cabinet of the refrigeration appliance lengthwise and in a position above the position of the door (1). The guide has an adjustable inclination up and down and oriented towards the closed position of the door (1). When the door (1) reaches its side closed position, the lower edge (8) of the door comes up close against the corresponding lower rebate element included in the appliance cabinet.

Description

VERTICAL REFRIGERATOR

WITH IMPROVED DOOR CLOSING

DESCRIPTION

  The present invention relates to a refrigerating appliance provided in particular with a vertical refrigeration display case, of the type comprising at least one compartment accessible via a pair

adjoining doors.

  Given that the invention applies to devices in which said doors are transparent, the terms showcase or door will be used interchangeably in the rest of the

description.

  As is known, in the devices of the cited type, the refrigerating compartment is closed on the front by at least one pair of adjoining doors sliding laterally and provided with devices ensuring their

  automatic closing when released.

  Generally, these devices include at least one counterweight and pulley assembly in which an adequate counterweight is housed in an anterior vertical edge of the display case and hung on a cable connected by means of an adequate pulley placed at the corresponding upper end. said edge

vertical to the sliding display case.

  The whole of this system is constructed in such a way that, when a display case is opened and then released, the counterweight acts via said cable and said pulley in a direction having the effect

to close said window.

  Due to the relatively large dimensions of the compartment and therefore of the display cases, these have a considerable weight, which leads to several

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  disadvantages: firstly, the corresponding counterweights must have a weight and therefore a considerable bulk to drive said doors, which are placed on, or hung on, appropriate rollers at the top and / or at the bottom. Secondly, due to wear and dust or dirt entering the movable members ensuring the sliding associated with the display case, there is a progressive increase in the resistance to friction during the movement of the display case and a weakening

gradual effect of the counterweight.

  In addition, in the case of doors suspended from above on horizontal guides, it is not possible to have an effective seal in the lower part because it is necessary to leave a minimum clearance to allow movement from the bottom of the door in relation to the lower leaf. To ensure this seal, it is therefore necessary to provide the door or said leaf with a sliding seal ensuring a partial seal.

which therefore wears out frequently.

  The result of all this is a gradual loss of efficiency of the aforementioned counterweight closure system, the display case tending, after a certain period of use, to remain open. In addition, said counterweights must be adequately housed in closed vertical guides, which entails production costs and uses space inside the refrigerating cabinet which could be

used otherwise.

  Another method for ensuring automatic closing of the door is the well-known installation of elastic return springs. However, these are not free from drawbacks in the sense that their action gradually diminishes until it becomes zero as the window is closed, which

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  can easily leave the window open or at least ajar. If on the contrary we want to avoid this kind of problem, it is possible to preload the spring, but this brings as a new disadvantage the need for a greater effort on the part of

  the user to open the display case.

  The main objective of the present invention is to provide a refrigerating appliance with a compartment with adjoining doors provided with support means allowing them to open without any particular effort and to close automatically and fully when they are released. Another objective of the present invention consists in making said support means in such a way that the closing force of the display cases is easily adjustable between predetermined margins. Another object of the present invention is to provide a refrigerating appliance of the aforementioned type in which said support means require the use of a minimum quantity of material and labor, while remaining easy to dismantle for the purpose of cleaning. According to the present invention, these objectives are achieved by means of a refrigerating appliance with a compartment with adjoining doors incorporating the

  Features of the appended claims which

  device will be better understood thanks to description

  following, given by way of nonlimiting example, thanks

  to the appended claims, and with reference to

  The following drawings in which: Figure 1 is a schematic front perspective view of an apparatus according to the present invention, with

open door.

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  Figure 2 is a front perspective view of the apparatus according to the present invention, with the two

doors closed.

  Figure 3 shows the apparatus of Figure 1 but with the door closed and with an alternative development. Figure 4 is a front view of a complete apparatus. Figures 5 and 5a are sectional views of two details in two states of a door according to the present invention. Figures 6 and 6a are sectional views of another detail in two states of a door according to the

present invention.

  The solution worked out essentially consists in making a refrigeration cabinet fitted with at least one vertical door sliding horizontally and suspended at its upper edge from a plurality of elements fixed to said edge and connected to suitable fixed retaining supports, in particular guides, arranged at the top of the furniture of said

  appliance, in a position above said door.

  Referring to the figures, there is the sliding door 1 on the upper edge 2 of which is applied a plurality of fixed supports 3 having different heights and in turn connected to sliding elements 4 which engage on a continuous support upper 5 preferably consisting of a continuous guide in which said

  sliding elements 4 can move.

  Said continuous support 5 is located along the vertical projection of the two combined positions of the open and closed door and is stably locked against the upper part of the refrigerating cabinet. This support is arranged so as to be

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  slightly inclined up and down in the direction of the closing movement of the door, so that, the construction configuration having been adequately provided and according to this instruction, when the door is closed, it can be opened by exerting on it a tangential force in order to make it slide into the open position, said force being necessary to overcome the force of gravity which makes it possible to run the door on said inclined support 5 by lifting it from the lowest position, which corresponds to the door closed, to the highest position

  high, which corresponds to the open door.

  Conversely, and naturally, when the open door is released from any retaining force, it begins under the effect of the force of gravity to move along said inclined support 5 in the direction of descent, that is to say say according to a closing movement, up to the closing position where the external upright 6 of the door is stopped by the corresponding vertical rebate 7 of the refrigerating cabinet. This movement is facilitated if there is interposed between said door and the corresponding closing amount a return spring 30 working in

  traction. However, it is easily understandable -

  and experimentally verifiable - that the installation of a simple return spring placed horizontally to help keep the door closed has certain drawbacks: in fact, since the elastic force of a spring on its working range is substantially proportional to its excursion from its rest position relative to its length at rest, if when the door is closed the spring is not preloaded, its action becomes almost zero when the door is barely ajar, which makes its action

illusory.

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  Conversely, if the spring is preloaded so as to act effectively even with the door ajar, this leads to an unnecessarily high elastic load when the door is fully opened and which, added to the closing force due to the closing device by the aforementioned gravity, produces a force too high for a user who must hold the door open with one hand, the other hand being used

  to store items in the refrigerated space.

  To eliminate this drawback, an improvement is advantageously proposed which consists in adopting a preloaded spring with a length

  much greater than the maximum excursion of the door.

  In this way, the spring closing force becomes substantially more constant, given its greater length, and this force is easily adjustable to the desired value by taring so

adequate spring preload.

  However, in order to be able to mount a spring of length much greater than the travel of the door, said spring having to act on the latter with a horizontal force and failing to have spring attachment points located at an adequate distance and at the same height, as a remote attachment point 32, a 23 point located on the lower part of the cabinet, close to or vertical to the door closing upright, as shown in the figures, is chosen, and a fixing point on the door is a point 31 located on the

  upper part or better on the edge of it.

  So that said spring can act in the horizontal direction on the door, even if the distant attachment point 32 is located at the bottom, a rotary element 33 is provided, or better still a pulley provided with a groove on its external surface, stably arranged at the top of the appliance cabinet,

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  substantially vertical to said point of application

  away from the elastic element.

  The spring passes outside said pulley, which makes it possible to satisfy the conditions of a spring acting horizontally on the door and having a length suitably greater than the travel of the latter. It is therefore obvious that the shape of the door can remain rectangular in which the two fixed supports 3 preferably have different heights or are placed at different levels from that of the upper edge of the door, in order to compensate for the difference in level of the respective engagement points on the continuous guide 5 so that the door remains in a vertical position, the latter being able to move in a rectilinear translational movement corresponding to

  the direction of said inclined support 5.

  In this way, a closing system is always effective, independent of any mechanism, even simple, because it depends on the only gravity force, economical to build, reliable in use and moreover convenient because the opening force Door

  is independent of its position.

  The present invention also allows for other improvements. The first of these results from the possibility of adjusting the inclination of said inclined support 5 so as to obtain greater or smaller opening forces according to the preferences of each, the weight of the door and also to compensate for the d '' braking effects caused by the wear of the parts which must act with each other

during door operation.

  The possibility of adjusting said tilt can be obtained in many ways, all immediately

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  achievable by the sector expert, and it will only be

not detailed further.

  In order to prevent wear reducing the effectiveness of the invention, another improvement consists in providing an adjustable preload to compensate for the possible variations in friction and the reduction in force.

spring return.

  A third improvement can be obtained by

  making a door according to Figures 1 and 3, that is

  say a door in which the difference S between the upper and lower levels of its lower edge 8, which correspond to the positions door fully open and door completely closed under the effect of the inclination of the guide 5, is provided to coincide with the distance separating said lower edge 8 of the door when the latter is open and the corresponding lower rebate 9 of the frame in which the sliding doors are mounted and against which the lower edge 8 of the door is closed during the

door closing.

  The advantage of such a construction stems from the fact that, when the door is in the fully closed lateral position, which corresponds to the stopping of the external vertical upright 6 of the door on the vertical rebate of the upright 7 of the refrigerating cabinet, said lower edge 8 of the door is closed against said corresponding lower rebate 9, which thus determines both a lateral and a lower closure of the door relative to the opening of the internal space, thereby eliminating the possibility of interstices leaking refrigerated air along the side or bottom edges of

the door.

  Figures 5 and 5a illustrate a particularly useful improvement of the present invention. In

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  Indeed, we observe the lower edge 8 of the door with which is associated a spacer 11 and two side sheets 10 of glass which form with said edge, said spacer and other components not shown the showcase made according to the technique well

known from "double glazing".

  At the lower rebate 9 is placed a flexible seal 12 applied to said rebate and

  length substantially equal to the latter.

  As shown in Figure 5, when the door is open, it is slightly raised and the lower edge 8 of the door is therefore at a certain distance S from the lower rebate 9 of said frame, so as not to interfere with said seal. As can be seen in FIG. A, when the door is closed, its lower edge 8 descends under the effect of the inclined guide 5 until said lower edge comes into contact with said flexible seal 12,

compressing it.

  In this way, when the door is closed, the adhesion between said lower edge 8 and said seal 12 also guarantees the lower closing of the door against the ingress of outside air, despite the

  particular oblique movement of the door.

  Figures 6 and 6a illustrate an example of upper suspension of the door on the inclined guide 5. The two glass sheets 10 which constitute the movable showcase are separated by the spacer 21 but they are held together by the structure 27, which is in turn supported by the fixing element 22 suspended from the shaft 23 with which are associated on the sides thereof two rotating rollers 24 which rotate on a virtually horizontal axis

secured to said shaft 23.

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  The guide 5 is in the form of an inverted U and its outer wings 27 are folded inwards in order to form two inclined paths on which the rotating rollers 24 come to bear and can move. Said guide is in turn supported by the upper return 25 of the frame containing the door and it is inclined so as to be completely glued against said return at its highest point and to be distant from it by a distance D at its generic point. , as shown by the comparison between Figures 6 and 6a. he

  It is clear from the above description that,

  at the lowest point of said guide, this distance D coincides with the point of greatest descent of the

  door, and therefore with the aforementioned level difference S.

  It is obvious that the sector expert can define other technical solutions by using the device for supporting and adjusting the movement of the door and the associated members, using the usual techniques and knowledge. However, even if the present invention has been described with generally known terminology, it is not considered to be limited to the example given, since the sector expert can bring to it

many modifications.

  It is therefore intended that the appended claims

  include all the notorious modifications obvious to the sector expert and which fall into the mind

  and the scope of the present invention.

For ALPENINOX INDUSTRIE S.p.A.

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Claims (10)

  1. Refrigeration appliance comprising at least one compartment closed by at least one vertical door sliding laterally on suitable sliding elements (4) associated with a corresponding guide (5) disposed on the upper and / or lower edges of said door, said door being able be closed automatically, characterized in that said guide is fixed to the cabinet of said refrigerating appliance in length and in a position greater than the combined positions of said door when it is open and closed, said guide having an inclination oriented   up and down towards the door closed position.   2. Refrigerating appliance according to claim 1, characterized in that the inclination of said guide is   adjustable relative to the furniture of said device.   3. Refrigerating appliance according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that, when said door reaches its lateral closing position, the lower edge (8) of said door is closed against the corresponding lower rebate (9) of the cabinet of said appliance . 4. Refrigerating appliance according to one of   previous claims, characterized in that it is   provided with at least one elastic element (30) capable of   close the door automatically.   5. Refrigerating appliance according to claim 3 or 4, characterized in that said lower rebate (9) is provided with an elastic seal (12) capable of being compressed under said lower edge (8) when the door is closed in order to '' prevent air from passing between said   lower edge and said rebate.   6. Refrigerating appliance according to any one of   previous claims, characterized in that the SR 10781 IT / JB   guide (5) is in the form of an inverted U and its outer wings (27) are folded inwards so as to form two inclined paths on which two corresponding rotating rollers (24) are supported and can roll. 7. Refrigerating appliance according to claim 6, characterized in that said door is supported by a fixing element (22) suspended from a vertical support (23) on the sides of which are associated said rollers (24) rotating on a horizontal axis   virtually integral with said support (23).   8. Refrigerating appliance according to any one of   claims 4 or following, characterized in that   the elastic element (30) is preloaded and mounted with one of its ends (31) at a first point located on the upper part of said door, preferably on its upper edge, and the other end (32) in a second point located on the lower part of the appliance cabinet, near the door closing amount.   9. Refrigerating appliance according to claim 8, characterized in that said elastic element passes outside a rotating element (33), preferably a pulley having a groove on its external surface, arranged stably at the level upper part of the appliance cabinet, substantially on the vertical of said second point   application of said elastic element.   10. Refrigerating appliance according to claim 8 or 9, characterized in that the preload of said element elastic is adjustable. SR 10781 IT / JB