EP1529910A1

EP1529910A1 - Refrigeration apparatus with improved common door hinge

Info

Publication number: EP1529910A1
Application number: EP03025251A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Fred Viol
Original assignee: Electrolux Home Products Corp NV
Current assignee: Electrolux Home Products Corp NV
Priority date: 2003-11-06
Filing date: 2003-11-06
Publication date: 2005-05-11

Abstract

Refrigeration apparatus comprising two doors arranged side by side or on top of each other, a common support plate for two hinges for said doors provided on an outer wall of the apparatus, and at least a bolt applied in a slot-shaped hole provided in said common support plate, in which between said support plate and said wall there is placed a spacer made of a deformable material and provided with a through-hole for said bolt. In said deformable spacer there is provided a second deformable and projecting bush at the place where said through-hole is located in the spacer, said bush being so sized as to be able to be substantially inserted in the respective slot-shaped hole of said support plate.

Description

The present invention refers to refrigerator appliances, in particular those intended for use in households, provided with at least two separate compartments provided on a side-by-side arrangement or on top of each other, and featuring respective doors, for food storage and preservation applications.
Usually, these refrigerator compartment doors are aligned with each other and are applied on to the outer wall of the appliance by means of respective hinges of a traditional kind.
Owing to said doors being so aligned, even their hinges are of course aligned; as a result, on the outer wall of the appliance in the front region between the two doors, there are provided two distinct hinges, i.e. a hinge for a door and a second hinge for the other door, said two hinges being supported by respective mounting plates fastened onto the front wall. These plates turn therefore out as being arranged side-by-side relative to each other, or on top of each other, and perform a single and same task. It therefore is a common practice to have the function of said two plates brought together by applying a single plate on which the two different hinges are then fastened.
Largely known in the art is also the fact that, during the assembly of said doors, owing generally to normal manufacturing tolerances and, more particularly, frequently occurring out-of-alignment conditions of the hinges lying "externally" to the doors and the "internal" hinges of the same doors with respect to each other, the latter being supported by a single fastening plate, the doors tend to take a position in which they are not perfectly aligned with respect to each other and come rather to feature a typical angulation, i.e. inclination relative to each other, which, albeit modest, arouses a negative impression of poor quality of the appliance concerned.
In view of doing away with this drawback, it is a known practice in the art to provide this hinge mounting plate with two slot-like holes, in which there are then inserted respective screws or bolts that thread into the underlying front wall of the appliance for engaging the same.
In the case that a misalignment condition would occur between two contiguous doors, all it is required to do in view of removing said condition is to loosen said fastening screws or bolts and cause the mounting plate to slide relative to the front wall, this being actually allowed for by the slot-shape of the respective holes that are therefore displaceable relative to said screws or bolts. Considering that both the central hinges are applied on to said plate, such adjustment will therefore enable the inclination of both doors to be modified with respect to an axis extending orthogonally to the direction of adjustment and, conclusively, the desired alignment of these doors relative to each other to be eventually restored.
Anyway, this practice is well known to all those skilled in the art, so that no need arises here for it to be explained any further.
It should however be pointed out that, when practiced in an actual manufacturing environment, this way of working gives rise to following major drawback: if an undesired misalignment of the doors occurs or is noticed during assembly, the operator should loosen the two screws of the central plate supporting the intermediate hinges, let this plate slide relative to the fastening bolts for as long a displacement length as necessary, and then tighten the screws again. However, these operations require a lot of time to be completed, along with a level of training and skill that is not usually available along a normal assembly line.
It should be in fact remembered that the doors are assembled on the production line, where task times planned to carry out each single working operation and phase are assigned in a very accurate, strict manner. Moreover, production personnel is generally trained to perform normal assembly operations, but not to carry out any particular adjustment, such as the one that has been described just above, which must therefore be carried out by specially trained, skilled staff, and which require additional task times that cannot be accurately assigned in advance.
It would therefore be desirable, and it is actually a main purpose of the present invention, to provide a refrigeration apparatus, preferably a refrigerator for residential use, that is provided with at least two doors in a side-by-side arrangement, or arranged on top of each other, and provided, in the region between the two doors, with two hinges supported by a single plate fastened on to the front wall of the apparatus by means of at least a bolt passing through a respective slot-shaped hole of said plate, which is capable of being adjusted by being displaced for a pre-established maximum length, without any need for said at least a bolt to be loosened.
In addition, such refrigeration apparatus must be capable of being manufactured with the use of readily available, existing materials and techniques, and must also be reliable and safe in its operation.
According to the present invention, these aims are reached in a particular kind of refrigeration apparatus provided with at least two doors and a single fastening plate for the hinges arranged on the wall between the two doors, according to the characteristics as recited in the appended claims and described below by mere way of non-limiting example with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a symbolical front view of a refrigeration apparatus with two doors arranged on top of each other and provided with two respective hinges applied on to a common fastening plate arranged on the front wall of the apparatus between said two doors;
Figure 2 is a perspective view of a plate for supporting two hinges, according to the prior art;
Figure 3 is a front cross-sectional view of a plate, the two respective bolts thereof, the inside of the front wall of the apparatus and a spacer according to the present invention, as viewed orthogonally to the plane of the plate;
Figures 4 and 5 are two cross-sectional views of the assembly illustrated in Figure 3, as mounted on the front wall of the refrigeration apparatus, in two respective working conditions thereof;
Figure 6 is a perspective view of the spacer shown in Figure 3.

With reference to Figure 1, a refrigeration apparatus according to the present invention comprises two doors 1, 2 arranged on top of each other, between which there are mounted respective hinges (as represented by the respective pins 3 and 4) supported by a common fastening plate 5.
With reference to Figure 3, the above-mentioned plate is fastened on to the wall of the door by means of two bolts 6, 7, which are adapted to be inserted in two respective slot-shaped holes 8, 9 provided in said plate, and which therefore thread into and get fixed in the wall 10 of the refrigeration apparatus by engaging respective internally threaded bushes 30, 31 provided inside said wall 10.
According to the present invention, between said wall 10 and said plate 5 there is arranged a spacer 11 that is made of a readily deformable material; in order to enable the respective bolt to pass therethrough, respective holes 12, 13 are provided in said spacer.
With reference to Figures 4 and 5, which illustrate the way in which the present invention is used in practice, upon the plate and the two bolts having been mounted, the same plate comes to lie, relative to the wall 10, in the way as illustrated in Figure 4. Should it happen that the doors exhibit a certain undesired misalignment with respect to each other, all it takes, as this has already been stated hereinbefore, is to shift the plate and, as a result, correspondingly shift the respective hinging points, so as to bring the doors into a correct mutual alignment condition. To this purpose, and without any need arising for any of said bolts to be loosened, it will be sufficient for said plate to be properly shifted, e.g. by knocking it slightly on a side, until it takes the desired position, i.e. as much as necessary to bring the doors into alignment. It should in fact be noticed that, prior to the spacer 11 being so deformed, the axes X and Y of the slot- shaped holes 8, 9 of the plate and the bushes 20, 21 of the spacer, respectively, coincide (see Figure 4), whereas they are of course no longer aligned with each other after such a deformation of the spacer 11 (see Figure 5).
This can be most easily obtained thanks to the fact that the plate is capable of sliding relative to the bolts, which are firmly attached to the wall, while carrying the spacer with it; in doing so, the spacer, which is deformable, yields to conform to the shape of the bolts.
Therefore, the plate can move with respect to the fastening bolts, thanks to the slot-shaped hole that allows for a relative shifting movement, and can also move with respect to the wall 10 owing to the interposition of said spacer 11, which is capable of conforming to the shape of the bolts, thereby keeping it substantially embedded and locked thanks to its deformability.
The present invention is such as to also allow for further improvements. In fact, with reference to Figures 3 and 6, respective outstanding and deformable bushes 20, 21 that are provided with properly elongated shapes adapted for insertion in the respective slot-shaped holes, are applied in correspondence of the holes 12 and 13 in said spacer 11. Said shapes of said bushes are advantageously obtained partly in the form of an ellipsis with mutually opposing lobes 22, 23, so as to be able to conform to the elongated shape of the respective slot-shaped holes, and partly in the form of portions of a cylinder 25, 26, so as to be able to automatically centre themselves about the contour of the respective bolt during screwing in.
Such an improvement therefore allows for a more accurate adaptation of the form of said bushes to the strain, i.e. deformation imposed by the plate being so shifted into alignment.
In addition, in order to further improve the functionality of the present invention, the portions of the spacers 11 that surround said respective bushes 20, 21 are provided with relief provisions or through- apertures 27, 28 allowing for easier and quicker deformability and conformation of the bushes with respect to the plate.
The desired result is in this way fully achieved, since the support plate can actually be mounted during the assembly of the refrigeration apparatus in the usual manner, and without any need for special adjustment actions to be taken, whereas, in the case that the doors require being brought into correct alignment, this operation is put off to the end of the assembly sequence, so as to be performed off-line in a most effective, very quick manner by slightly knocking the plate on a side thereof as far as necessary and, above all, without any need arising for the fastening bolts to be loosened.

Claims

Refrigeration apparatus, in particular for residential use, comprising:

at least two distinct storage compartments in a side-by-side arrangement or on top of each other, provided with respective doors;

a common support plate (5) for two hinges (3, 4) for the respective ones of said two doors, said plate being mounted on to the outer wall (10) of the casing of the apparatus,

at least a bolt (6, 7) adapted to be threaded in through a slot-shaped hole (8, 9) provided in said common support plate (5),

means adapted to firmly hold said bolt in said outer wall, preferably comprising at least a corresponding internally threaded bush (30, 31) provided into said wall and adapted to engage said respective bolt, characterized in that between said support plate (5) and said wall (10) there is arranged a spacer (11) made of a deformable material and provided with at least a through-hole (12, 13) adapted to receive the shank of said bolt (6, 7) when the latter is inserted in the sloth-shaped hole in said support plate (5).
Refrigeration apparatus according to claim 1, characterized in that in correspondence of said through-hole (12, 13) provided in said deformable spacer (11) there is placed a respective second outstanding bush (20, 21) of a deformable material, said second bush being provided on the surface of said spacer on the side thereof that faces said common support plate (5), and being so sized as to be capable of being substantially inserted in the respective slot-shaped hole (8, 9) of said plate (5).
Refrigeration apparatus according to claim 2, characterized in that said second bush (20, 21) is so shaped internally as to form partly an ellipsis with two mutually opposing lobes (22, 23) and partly portions (25, 26) of a cylinder having such a diameter as to be capable of exactly accommodate the shank of said respective bolt.
Refrigeration apparatus according to claim 2 or 3, characterized in that in the portion of said deformable spacer surrounding said bush (20, 21) there are provided one or more relief apertures (27, 28).