EP2299179A1

EP2299179A1 - Door for household appliance

Info

Publication number: EP2299179A1
Application number: EP10173799A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Luciano Cesa
Original assignee: Electrolux Home Products Corp NV
Current assignee: Electrolux Home Products Corp NV
Priority date: 2009-08-26
Filing date: 2010-08-24
Publication date: 2011-03-23
Also published as: ITMI20091505A1; IT1395601B1

Abstract

A door handle (24) for household appliance is provided; such door handle is associatable to an access opening to an inner compartment of the household appliance. The door includes a glass plate (26) and a door handle (27), made of the same material as the glass plate (26), and glued to the glass plate (26).

Description

The present invention relates to household appliances, and in particular to household appliances provided with doors in order to allow the user accessing to inner compartments of the household appliances.
Many household appliances are provided with one or more doors, arranged at one or more sides of the household appliance in order to allow the user accessing inner compartments of the same; a very common class of such household appliances, which will be examined hereinafter for simplicity but however without losing generality, are ovens for domestic use. A (typically front) panel of such type of household appliance defines a door that can be opened for accessing the inner cooking compartment. The panel defining the door can be formed by a glass plate, having variable sizes, possibly surrounded by a more or less extended frame, of the same material (typically metal) as the oven case.
In an suitable area of the front panel, typically in an upper portion of the same in case of door opening through a rotation about a horizontal axis, or laterally in case of opening through a rotation about a vertical axis, a door handle is applied in order to facilitate the door opening operation.
The door handle is usually of the same material as the oven outer case and/or of the peripheral zone around the glass plate, but however not of glass.
Many solutions have been proposed to ensure a good implementation of the door handle, both in terms of reliability for the final user and in terms of production costs for the manufacturer.
In particular, according to a solution known in the state of the art and described for example in the Korean patent application n. KR2001057083 , the door handle, made of metal, is fixed to the upper portion of the glass plate of the door through the use of suitable screws.
Such method, although widely used, is extremely inconvenient in terms of production costs, since the perforation of the glass plate, which is necessary for allowing the insertion of the screws, exposes the glass plate to the risk of breakage or, in general, of damage; as a consequence, during production, a certain amount of glass plates suffers from damages such as to make the same unusable, with consequent increase of the overall production costs.
In order to counter such drawback, in the European patent application n. EP0723116 there is proposed to fix a metal door handle in an appropriate position of the glass plate of the door through a gluing operation.
Although such solution allows reducing the production costs thanks to the reduced percentage of damaged glass plates, which is a consequence of the lack of necessity of perforating the glass, two different problems are still outlined.
Firstly, the gluing of the metal door handle directly on the glass plate has criticalities because of the difference between the two materials (metal-glass) in the molecular point of view. In fact, the gluing of a material characterized by an ordered molecular structure, such as metal, with a material characterized by an amorphous, and thus disordered, structure, such as glass, can not ensure a reliable and durable coupling especially in case of intensive use of the household appliance.
Moreover, even assuming of providing a metal frame surrounding the glass of the door, and gluing the metal handle directly on the frame, the area of the glass portion of the door would be accordingly reduced, which is an undesired condition since it reduces the view of the interior of the household appliance by the user.
In view of the state of the art herein disclosed, it is an object of the present invention to overcome the just mentioned drawbacks.
According to the present invention, there is provided a household appliance having a door associated to an access opening to an inner compartment of the household appliance itself, wherein the door includes a glass plate and a door handle, and the door handle is of the same material as the glass plate and is glued to the glass plate.
Advantageous embodiments are set forth in the dependent claims.
For example, the door can be provided with a door handle having substantially a parallelepiped shape.
Moreover, the door handle may include a further downward curved portion of the door handle, such portion extending from the free end of the door handle, in order to facilitate the grip by the user.
Even for facilitating the grip, the door handle may include a cavity in a face thereof having a greater length, within which the user may insert its hand fingers.
The household appliance may in particular be an oven.
A further aspect of the following invention relates to a method for making a household appliance door; the method includes the steps of providing a glass plate, providing a door handle of the same material as the glass plate, and finally performing the gluing the door handle on the glass plate.
Thanks to the present invention, the door offers to the user a wide view towards the interior of the household appliance (since all the surface thereof may be formed by a glass plate), a high gluing yield of the door handle and a general reduction of the production costs of the household appliance, since the criticalities connected with the execution of holes in the glass plate for screwing the door handle are avoided.
These and other features and advantages of the solution according to the present invention will be better understood with reference to the following detailed description of possible embodiments thereof, given purely by way of indicative but not limitative example, to be read in conjunction with the attached figures. In this respect, it is expressly understood that the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale and that, unless otherwise stated, they are intended merely to illustrate conceptually the described structures and procedures. In particular:

Figure 1 schematically shows, in a front perspective view, an oven provided with a door according to an embodiment known in the state of the art;
Figure 2 schematically shows, in a similar view to that of Figure 1, an oven provided with a door according to an embodiment of the present invention;
Figure 3 schematically shows, in a side perspective view, a detail of the oven of Figure 2, according to an embodiment of the present invention;
Figure 4 schematically shows, in a side view, a detail of the oven of Figure 2 according to another embodiment of the present invention, and
Figure 5 schematically shows, in a perspective side view, the door handle of Figure 3 according to another embodiment of the invention.

With reference to Figure 1, there is schematically shown, in a front perspective view, an oven 10 in an embodiment known in the state of the art; the oven 10, of generally parallelepiped shape, includes two opposite side walls 11, a base 12 to which floor resting feet 13 are mounted, and an top wall 19; typically, the side walls, the wall defining the base and the top wall are made of metal.
The oven is also provided with a front wall 15, made of metal too, with a central opening for accessing an inner compartment of the oven, adapted to house food to be cooked.
A door 14 is associated with the central opening in the front wall 15, the door that can be opened for accessing the inner compartment of the oven.
The door 14 includes a central glass plate 16 surrounded by a peripheral metal frame 18.
A door handle 17, made of metal, is fixed in an approximately central area of the upper portion of the peripheral frame 18, by metal-to-metal gluing; moreover, the provision of the frame 18 reduces the view of the interior of the oven. Another known solution provides the screwing of the metal door handle 17 directly on the glass plate 16, and in this case the peripheral frame 18 may not be provided; however, in this case the problems discussed in the introduction of possible breakage of the glass plate are encountered.
Figure 2 schematically shows, in a similar view to that of Figure 1, an oven 20 provided with a door according to an embodiment of the present invention.
The oven 20, as well as the oven 10 of Figure 1, generally is parallelepipedshaped, and includes two opposite side walls 21, a bottom base 22 to which floor resting feet 23 are mounted and an top wall; typically, the side walls, the wall defining the base and the top wall are made of metal.
The oven is also provided with a front wall 25, made of metal too, with a central opening for accessing an inner compartment of the oven, adapted to house food to be cooked.
The door 24 includes a glass plate 26, possibly surrounded by a peripheral frame 28, for example made of metal.
A glass door handle 27 is fixed in an approximately central area of the glass plate 26 through a gluing operation; such operation allows obtaining a high reliability of the door handle-door system (since the gluing occurs between two materials having the same molecular structure), and facilitates and makes the mounting operation of the door handle less critical, being not necessary to perforate the glass plate for making the holes for the screws, which translates in a production costs reduction. The gluing can be achieved by using any glue on the market particularly suitable to the stable gluing of two glass pieces to each other, such as a UV-hardening adhesive glue.
Moreover, the solution according to an embodiment of the invention allows obtaining a wide view towards the interior of the oven (thanks to the fact that the peripheral frame of the door, if provided, can have a very reduced height).
In addition, the door handle-door system made entirely of glass as above described may appear aesthetically more pleasant and refined.

Figure 3 schematically shows, in side perspective view, a detail of the oven of Figure 2, according to an embodiment of the present invention; the door handle 27 is for example rectangular parallelepiped shaped having a greater length face 27M glued on the glass plate 26 (parallel to the upper edge 26A of the glass plate 26), whereas the height thereof H defines the front extent of the door handle 27 necessary for the user to be able to grasp it.
Figure 4 schematically shows, in side view, a detail of the oven of Figure 2 according to another embodiment of the present invention; the door handle 47 of this variant is made up of two portions: a first portion 27 with rectangular parallelepiped shape having a greater length face 27M glued on the glass plate 26, whereas a height H thereof defines a part of the front extent of the door handle 47. In front from the first portion of the door handle 27 a second door handle portion 47P extends; such second portion is inclined, preferably downwards, with respect to the first portion, or it is curved, still downwards. The second handle portion 47P allows the user a simpler opening of the front door of the oven, since the grip is made easier.
Figure 5 schematically shows, in perspective side view, the door handle of Figure 3 according to another embodiment of the present invention; the door handle 27 is in this case a rectangular parallelepiped with an opening 51 that gives a C-shape to the door handle. The gluing of the door handle 27 is made by gluing the bottom bases 50A, 50B to the glass plate 26. In this way the door handle is spaced apart in its median portion from the glass plate 26, which facilitates the grasp by the user.

Naturally, in order to satisfy local and specific requirements, a person skilled in the art may apply to the solutions described above many modifications. In particular, although the present invention has been described with a certain degree of particularity with reference to preferred embodiments thereof, it should be understood that various omissions, substitutions and changes in the form and details as well as other embodiments are possible; moreover, it is expressly intended that specific elements and/or method steps described in connection with any disclosed embodiment of the invention may be incorporated in any other embodiment as a matter of general design choice.
For example, another aspect of the solution according to another embodiment of the present invention relates to the fact that the possible C-shaped profile discussed for the door handle illustrated in Figure 5 is valid also for the curved door handle shown in Figure 4. Furthermore, the described door handles can be arranged in directions different from that described according to an embodiment; in particular the door handle may conveniently be arranged perpendicularly to the edge 26A of glass plate (so as to allow, such as in the case of microwave ovens, a side opening of the door), or obliquely, both for functional reasons and for aesthetic reasons.
The peripheral frame of the glass plate 26 may not be provided, or even be of glass, so as to create a sort of chromatic continuity between the glass plate and the peripheral frame.
Similarly, the front wall 25 of the oven may not be provided and be entirely replaced by the glass plate of the door (with or without the peripheral frame).
It is also clear that the shape and size of the door handle may be different from those previously described and illustrated in the attached figures. For example, the door handle may be rounded C-shaped, or may be T-shaped or L-shaped with a single gluing area to the glass plate.
The gluing area, or the gluing areas of the door handle to the glass plate must still be sufficiently extended to allow a gluing strength sufficient to avoid detachment in all operating conditions of the household appliance.
The door handle could also be provided with gripping elements facilitating the grasp, for example coatings of elastomeric material in the grasping area.
Finally, although the present invention has been described and illustrated with reference to an oven, it is clear that it can be adopted in any type of household appliance (e.g., a dishwasher or a refrigerator) provided with a door that can be opened for accessing an inner compartment of the door appliance, wherein such door has a glass portion (typically a plate) on which a door handle is glued.

Claims

A household appliance (20) having an access opening to an inner compartment and a door (24) associated with such opening, the door including a glass plate (26) and a door handle (27),
characterized in that
said door handle is of the same material as the glass plate (26), and
said door handle (27) is glued to the glass plate.
The household appliance according to claim 1, wherein said door handle (27) includes a downwards angled or curved portion (47P).
The household appliance according to claim 1 or 2, wherein said door handle (27) includes a cavity in a face thereof having a greater length (27M).
The household appliance according any of the preceding claims, wherein the household appliance is an oven.
Method for producing a door (24) for household appliance, including the steps of:
- providing a glass plate;

- providing a door handle of the same material as the glass plate; and

- gluing the door handle to the glass plate.