GB2291915A - Door for refrigerating appliance - Google Patents

Abstract

An automatically re-closable door 1 is mounted so as to be slidable automatically along a guide 5 having an inclination directed downwardly towards the position of closure of the door so that the door is raised against gravity in moving from the closed to the open position. The inclination 5 can be adjusted. <IMAGE>

Description

VERTICAL REFRIGERATING APPLIANCE WITH IXPROVED CLOSURE OF THE DOORS The invention concerns a refrigeration appliance, of the type comprising at least one compartment which is accessible by way of a self closing door or pair of such doors.

In the following the terms display window member or door will be used hereinafter without distinction, in the description.

As is known, in appliances of the above-indicated type, the refrigerated compartment is closed at the front by at least one pair of laterally slidable doors which are disposed side-by-side and provided with devices for automatic closure thereof when they are released; generally such devices are formed by at least one counterweight-pulley mechanism in which a suitable counterweight is accommodated in a front vertical edge of the display window member and is suspended from a cable which, by means of a suitable pulley disposed on the respective upper end of said vertical edge, is connected to the slidable display window member.

The entire closure mechanism is so designed that, when a display window member is opened and then released, the counterweight acts by way of the cable and the pulley in the direction of closing the display window member.

Because of the relatively large dimensions of the compartment and thus of the window members, the latter are of substantial weight and that involves a number of disadvantages: on the one hand the associated counterweights must be of substantial weight and thus bulky in order to pull along the doors which are supported or suspended at the bottom and/or top at suitable rollers.

Secondly, because of wear and the accumulation of dust or dirt which penetrates into such movable sliding members which are associated with the window member, there is a progressive increase in the frictional resistance to the movement of the display window and a progressive reduction in the effect of the counterweight.

In addition, with doors suspended at the top on horizontal guides, it is not possible to have an effective sealing action at the bottom, having regard to the fact that a minimum play must be guaranteed to permit the movement of the bottom of the door with respect to the lower rabbet or frame member; to achieve such sealing integrity it is thus necessary to provide the door or the rabbet or frame member with a sliding lip element involving a partial sealing effect, which however is often quick to suffer wear.

The effect of all this is a progressive loss of efficiency of the described closure system using counterweights, whereby the display window member tends to remain open, after a period of use. In addition the counterweights have to be suitably accommodated in closed vertical guides, and that gives rise to structural burdens and involves taking up space within the refrigerator which could be used otherwise.

Another method of providing for automatic closure of the doors is the well-known installation of resilient return springs; however they are also not free from disadvantages in the sense that the action thereof progressively declines until it has completely disappeared in proportion to the closing movement of the display window member, which easily involves the danger of leaving the window member open or at least ajar; if however that problem is to be avoided, it is possible to preload the spring, but that involves the fresh disadvantage of requiring a greater force on the part of the user to open the window member.

The invention seeks to provide a refrigerator with an improved door closure mechanism.

A subsidiary aim of the invention lies in designing said support means in such a way that the force for closing the display window members can be easily adjusted within the present limits.

Another subsidiary aim of the invention is that of providing a refrigerating appliance of the specified type, in which said support means require the use of a minimum amount of material and manufacture and can also be easily dismantled for cleaning purposes.

According to the invention there is provided a refrigerating appliance comprising at least one compartment closed by at least one vertical door slidable laterally on suitable slidable elements associated with a respective guide which is disposed at the upper and/or lower edges of said door, said door being re-closable automatically, the guide being fixed to the casing of the appliance and being of a length and in a position to extend over the range of movement of the door including the open and closed positions of the door, said guide having an inclination directed downwardly towards the position of closure of the door so that the door is raised against gravity in moving from the closed to the open position.

The invention will be further described by way of non-limitative example with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a diagrammatic front perspective view of an appliance according to the invention, with the door open; Figure 2 shows a front perspective view of an appliance according to the invention, with both the doors closed; Figure 3 shows the same appliance as Figure 1 but with the door closed and with an alternative form of improvement; Figure 4 shows a front view of a complete appliance; Figures 5 and 5a show two sections of a detail in two different states of a door in an embodiment of the invention; and Figures 6 and 6a show two sections of another detail in two different states of a door in an embodiment of the invention.

As will become apparent, the invention involves the provision of a refrigerator with at least one horizontally slidable vertical door suspended at its upper edge by a plurality of elements fixed to said edge and engaged with suitable fixed entrainment supports such as in particular guides disposed on the topside of the casing of the appliance, in a position above said door.

With reference to the drawings, shown therein is the slidable door 1, to the upper edge 2 of which is fitted a plurality of fixed supports 3 of different heights, which in turn are connected to sliding elements 4 which are engaged in a continuous superposed support 5 preferably formed by a continuous guide in which the sliding elements 4 are capable of moving.

The continuous support 5 is as long as the vertical projection of the two combined positions of the door when open and closed, and is stably locked against the upper part of the casing of the refrigerator; it is disposed in such a way as to be slightly inclined downwardly in the direction of the door closure movement, so that, having arranged the structural configuration in a suitable manner and in accordance with the foregoing teaching, when the door is closed it can be opened by applying a tangential force thereto intended to slide it into the open position, said force being required to overcome the force of gravity that is necessary to cause the door to slide along the inclined support 5, involving raising it from the lowest position corresponding to the door-closed condition to the highest position corresponding to the door-open position.

Conversely and naturally when the open door is freed from any entrainment force, the door, due to the effect of the force of gravity, will begin to slide along the inclined support 5, moving along it in the direction in which it extends downwardly and thus with a closure movement into the closure position when the outside vertical frame member 6 of the door will be arrested by the corresponding vertical frame or rabbet member 7 of the casing of the refrigerator; that movement is facilitated if a return spring 30 which operates in a tensile mode is disposed between the door and the corresponding closure frame member.

It will be readily appreciated and also verified by experiment that fitting a simple return spring which is disposed horizontally and which helps to hold the door closed involves a number of disadvantages: in fact, bearing in mind that the resilient force of a spring in its working range is substantially proportional to its travel from the rest position with respect to its length at rest, if the spring, with the door closed, is not preloaded, the action thereof becomes virtually zero when the door is scarcely ajar, thereby frustrating the action thereof.

Conversely, if the spring is preloaded in such a way that it produces an effective action even when the door is ajar, that amounts to involving a uselessly high resilient loading when the door is completely open, which, being added to the closure force due to the above-described door closure arrangement involving the force of gravity, produces a force that is too high for a user who has to hold the door open with only one hand, the other hand being used to deal with the articles in the refrigerated compartment.

In order to overcome those disadvantages there is advantageously proposed an improvement which consists of the adoption of a preloaded spring of a length which is much greater than the maximum travel of the door.

In that way the closure force of the spring becomes substantially more constant, having regard to the greater length thereof, and that force can be easily adjusted to the desired value by suitably calibrating the preloading of the spring.

However, in order to be able to fit a spring of a length which is much greater than the travel distance of the door, that spring having to act on the door with a horizontal force, and without the provision of connection points for the spring which are sufficiently far away and disposed at the same height, the remote connection point 32 selected is a point disposed in the lower part of the casing, in the vicinity of or in vertical alignment with the door-closure jamb member as shown in the drawings, while the point of attachment to the door is a point 31 disposed on the upper portion of the door, preferably on its edge.

So that the spring can act on the door in a horizontal direction, even if the remote connection point 32 is disposed at the bottom, the arrangement includes a rotary element 33, preferably a pulley with a grooved external surface, which is disposed in a stationary position at the upper portion of the casing of the appliance, substantially in vertical alignment with the remote connection point of the resilient member.

The spring is caused to pass around the outside of the pulley, whereby the conditions that the spring acts horizontally on the door and that it is of a length that is adequately greater than the travel movement thereof are satisfied.

It is thus apparent that the shape of the door may remain that of a rectangle in which the two fixed supports 3 are preferably of different heights or are fitted at different levels on the upper edge of the door, at any rate in such a way as to compensate for the difference in level of the respective points of engagement on the continuous guide 5, leaving the door in a vertical position and being capable of moving with a rectilinear translatory movement corresponding to the direction of the inclined support 5.

That therefore provides a closure system which is always effective, being independent of any mechanism however simple, since it depends only on the direct action of the force of gravity, while being economical in regard to construction, reliable in use and thereby more convenient since the force for opening the door is independent of its position.

The present invention permits more improvements: the first is afforded by the possibility of adjusting the inclination of the inclined support 5 in such a way as to give rise to higher or lower forces for opening the door, according to personal preferences, the weight of the door and also to compensate for any braking effects caused by wear of the members which are to interact in the movement of the door.

Adjustability of the inclination of the support can be achieved in many ways which can all be immediately realised by the man skilled in the art, and it will not be further described herein.

In order to prevent wear from reducing the effectiveness of the invention, a further improvement provides that the preloading is adjustable to compensate for the possible variations in frictional effects and the reduction in the return force of the spring.

A third improvement can be achieved by designing a door as shown in Figures 1 and 3, that is to say a door in which the difference in level S between the upper and lower levels of the its lower edge 8, which correspond to the door positions of being fully open and fully closed, due to the effect of the inclination of the guide 5, is caused to coincide with the distance between said lower edge 8 of the door when open and the corresponding lower frame or rabbet member 9 of the frame within which the sliding doors are mounted, and against which the lower edge 8 of the door is stopped when the door is closed.

The advantage of that structure derives from the fact that, when the door is in the completely closed lateral position which corresponds to the outside vertical frame member 6 of the door being arrested against the vertical stop frame member 7 of the casing of the refrigerator, then that lower edge 8 of the door is stopped against the corresponding lower frame member 9, thereby defining the conditions of simultaneous automatic closure both at the side and the bottom of the door with respect to the opening of the compartment, thereby eliminating the possibility of refrigerated air-leakage cracks or openings along the both lateral and lower edges of the door.

With reference to Figures 5 and 5a, shown therein is a particularly useful improvement in the present invention: shown therein is the lower edge 8 of the door, with which there are associated a spacer 11 and two lateral glass panes 10 which, with said edge, said spacer and other components (not shown), form the display window member which is constructed in accordance with the well-known technology of the "sealed double-glazed unit".

Disposed at the lower frame member 9 is a flexible seal 12 which is fitted to said lower frame member and is substantially as long as same.

As shown in Figure 5, when the door is open it is slightly raised and therefore the lower edge 8 of the door is at a certain distance S from the lower frame member 9 of the door frame structure, such as not to interfere with the seal. It will be seen from Figure 5a that, when the door is closed, its lower edge 8 is moved downwardly due to the effect of the inclined guide 5 to the point at which the lower edge 8 interferes with the flexible seal 12, thus bending it.

In that way, when the door is closed, the adhesion between the lower edge 8 and the seal 12 also guarantees that the door is closed off at the lower part thereof to prevent the infiltration of outside air, in spite of the particular inclined movement of the door.

With reference to Figures 6 and 6a, shown therein is an example of the upper engagement of the door with the inclined guide 5. The two glass panes 10 constituting the movable display window member are separated by the spacer 21 but they are held joined together by the structure 27 which in turn is supported by the connecting member 22 which is suspended from the shaft 23 with which there are associated at the sides thereof two rotatable wheels 24 rotating on a horizontal spindle which is virtually fixed with respect to the shaft 23.

The guide 5 is shaped in the form of an inverted U and its outside arms 27 are bent over inwardly so as to form two inclined track portions, within which the rotary wheels 24 are supported and can slide.

The guide is in turn supported by the upper frame member 25 of the frame structure containing the door, and is inclined in such a way as to be completely in contact with the upper frame member 25 at its highest point, and spaced therefrom at a distance D at a general point thereof, as is shown by the comparison between Figures 6 and 6a; it will be clear from the foregoing description that, at the lowest point of the guide, the distance D will coincide with the point of maximum downward movement of the door and thus with the above-mentioned difference in level S.

It will be apparent that the man skilled in the art can arrive at other technical solutions in regard to use of the device for supporting and regulating the movement of the door and the associated members, having recourse to normal knowledge and techniques; although therefore the invention has been described with generally known terminology, it is not deemed to be limited by the example set forth since the man skilled in the art may make numerous modifications therein.

It will be appreciated therefore that the accompanying claims include such obvious modifications that are evident to the man skilled in the art and which fall within the true spirit and scope of the present invention as defined in the appended claims.

Claims (12)

1. A refrigerating appliance comprising at least one compartment closed by at least one vertical door slidable laterally on suitable slidable elements associated with a respective guide which is disposed at the upper and/or lower edges of said door, said door being re-closable automatically, the guide being fixed to the casing of the appliance and being of a length and in a position to extend over the range of movement of the door including the open and closed positions of the door, said guide having an inclination directed downwardly towards the position of closure of the door so that the door is raised against gravity in moving from the closed to the open position.

2. A refrigerating appliance according to claim 1 wherein the inclination of said guide is adjustable with respect to the casing of said appliance.

3. A refrigerating appliance according to claim 1, 2 or 3, wherein when said door reaches its closed position, the lower edge of said door is closed against a corresponding lower frame member included in the casing of said appliance.

4. A refrigerating appliance according to claim 3, wherein said lower frame member is provided with a resilient seal capable of being pressed downwardly by said lower edge when the door is closed so as to prevent the flow of air between said lower edge and said frame member.

5. A refrigerating appliance according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the guide is shaped in the form of an inverted U and its outside arms are bent over inwardly so as to form two inclined tracks within which two respective rotatable wheels are supported and can slide.

6. A refrigerating appliance according to claim 5, wherein said door is supported by a connecting element which is suspended from a vertical support, with the sides of which are associated two rotary wheels rotating on a horizontal spindle which is virtually fixed with respect to said support.

7. A refrigerating appliance according to any one of the preceding claims and provided with at least one resilient element for automatically re-closing said door.

8. A refrigerating appliance according to claim 7, wherein said resilient element is preloaded and is fitted with one end thereof to a first point disposed on the upper portion of said door, and with the other end to a second point disposed on the lower portion of the casing of the appliance in the vicinity of the door closure jamb frame member.

9. A refrigerating appliance according to claim 8 wherein said resilient element is caused to pass around the outside of a rotary element, which is disposed at a stationary position at the upper portion of the casing of the appliance, substantially in vertical alignment with said.

second point of fitment of said resilient element.

10. A refrigerating appliance according to any one of claims 7 to 9, wherein the preloading of said resilient element is adjustable.

11. A refrigerating appliance according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein at least one such door is in the form of a display window.

12. A refrigerating appliance constructed and arranged to operate substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to and as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.