EP1697608B1 - Housing for a household appliance - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to a housing for a cabinet-like household appliance, in particular a refrigerator such as a refrigerator, a bottle storage cabinet or the like.

In the case of built-in refrigeration appliances, the door with which the appliance is equipped by the manufacturer is usually concealed behind a furniture panel when the appliance is installed, which is swiveled when the door is opened and closed. To provide an aesthetically pleasing appearance, the edges of this furniture panel must be precisely aligned with those of adjacent cabinet doors. For this purpose, the furniture panel itself may be posted as a door to a refrigerator receiving furniture body, and the furniture panel and the refrigerator door are slidably coupled together, so that the refrigerator door pivotal movement of the furniture flap can follow, although the pivot axes of furniture and refrigerator door are not the same , An alignment of the furniture panel on adjacent cabinet doors must be done here using the hinges that connect the furniture panel with the furniture body; a precise adjustability of the refrigerator door is not required.

This is different for built-in household appliances with a body and a door, in which the door supplied by the device manufacturer is provided to remain unobserved in the installation position of the refrigerator visible. Here is an adjustability of the door in relation to the body required. Likewise, in home appliances with multiple adjacent doors, at least one door must be adjustable to align its edges flush with those of another.

In order to realize a desired opening movement of the door of the household appliance, for example, to prevent an abutment of a hinge-side of the door on an adjacent wall of the furniture compartment, it is often necessary to strike the door on the body of the device via multi-joint hinges. If the attachment points of these hinges on the body and on the door of the device are not exactly matched, so that the arrangement of the body, hinges and door is under internal tension, it may happen that the axes of the hinges are deflected from an exactly parallel orientation and thus lead a precession movement when opening and closing the door. The life of the hinges is considerably shortened.

From the US 5,471,709 is a hinge of an electrical device, such as a refrigerator, known, which is particularly suitable for use in built-in appliances and is designed in the form of a multi-joint hinge.

The object of the invention is a housing for a cabinet-like household appliance a body and at least one door, which are connected by at least two multi-joint hinges to specify, which allows an adjustment of the door position by a user with simple means and without the risk of straining the hinges tension.

The object is achieved in that the door is held on an upper support surface of the first multi-joint hinge and a lower support surface of the second multi-joint hinge via a large number of spacers inserted between the door and at least one of the support surfaces. The number of spacers present must be in order to mount the door stress-free on the housing, can be determined by the manufacturer of the housing - depending on the manufacturing tolerance flat rate uniform for a housing model or individually for each individual housing -; a user who wants to adjust the height of the door at a later time can do so by displacing spacers from a gap between the door and one of the support surfaces into the gap between the door and the other support surface. As long as the number of spacers used remains the same, the suspension of the door remains de-energized.

Preferably, a heat-insulating body of the door is disposed between the support surfaces of the hinges, and to hide the hinges, edge portions projecting beyond the heat-insulating body are formed on an outer wall of the door facing the viewer.

The outer wall of the door may in particular be a glass pane. The glass sheet is preferably transparent at least in a central area to provide a view of the interior of the housing; it is preferably provided in the edge region with an opaque coating which hides the hinges and optionally other parts of the door.

The door is preferably held to the support surface of at least one of the hinges by one or more screws. Such a screw preferably extends through a slot in the support surface to permit adjustment movement of the door and screw in the direction of the slot. Thus, in addition to the freedom created by the spacers degree of adjustment in the vertical, an additional adjustment degree of freedom for the door is created, which can be oriented in any horizontal direction.

Preferably, this second degree of freedom of the adjustment is aligned parallel to the door.

To facilitate adjustment in the second degree of freedom, preferably the multi-link hinge is provided with a first tab connected to the support surface and the door is provided with a second tab opposite the first tab which is perpendicular to the orientation of the elongated hole, i. perpendicular to the orientation of the second adjustment degree of freedom, aligned and provided with aligned bores for receiving a screw. By tightening the screw, which is held in a thread, the two tabs can be pulled towards each other in a precisely adjustable manner, allowing a quick, targeted adjustment.

The screw receiving thread may belong to a nut, the two tabs between the nut and the head of the screw are; Preferably, however, the thread is formed by the bore of one of the two tabs.

When drilling the other tab may be a vertically aligned slot.

The second tab can be an integral part of the door; In this case, the vertically aligned slot would be required to absorb height displacements of the door resulting from the displacement of spacers with respect to the first tab. Preferably, however, the second tab is a part of a component which is detachably screwed to the door. Then, expediently the spacers are dimensioned so that they extend in the assembled state not only between the support surface of the multi-joint hinge and the door, but also between the second lug-carrying member and the door, so that the height of this component with respect to the multi-joint hinge does not vary, even if the height of the door is changed by moving the spacers.

• Fig. 1 eine perspektivische Ansicht eines Weinlagerschranks als Beispiel für ein Haushaltsgerät mit einem erfindungsgemäßen Gehäuse;
• Fig. 2 einen vertikalen Schnitt durch die Tür des Weinlagerschranks;
• Fig. 3 eine auseinandergezogene Darstellung eines Mehrgelenkscharniers und weiterer Bauteile, die Tür und Korpus des Weinlagerschranks miteinander verbinden; und
• Fig. 4 eine teilweise geschnittene Ansicht der Bauteile aus Fig. 3 gemäß einer abgewandelten Ausgestaltung.
• Fig. 1 zeigt eine perspektivische Ansicht eines Flaschenlagerschranks als Beispiel für ein Haushaltsgerät, an dem die vorliegende Erfindung angewandt ist.

Further features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description of exemplary embodiments with reference to the accompanying figures. Show it:

• Fig. 1 a perspective view of a wine storage cabinet as an example of a household appliance with a housing according to the invention;
• Fig. 2 a vertical section through the door of the wine storage cabinet;
• Fig. 3 an exploded view of a multi-joint hinge and other components that connect the door and body of the wine storage cabinet together; and
• Fig. 4 a partially sectioned view of the components Fig. 3 according to a modified embodiment.
• Fig. 1 shows a perspective view of a bottle storage cabinet as an example for a household appliance to which the present invention is applied.

The body 1 of the bottle storage cabinet is intended for installation in a (not shown) furniture tables. However, while most built-in refrigeration appliances, the front of the door is covered by a furniture panel, the door 2 of the device shown here is provided to remain visible when installed.

An outer wall of the door 2 is formed by a glass plate 3, which is glued to its rear side on a rectangular frame 4 made of metal. At a top and a bottom of the frame in each case a movable element of a multi-joint hinge 5, 6 attacks. An inner glass plate 7 (see Fig. 2 ) is connected to the outer glass plate 3 via a second rectangular frame 8, which is surrounded by the frame 4 rings without touching it. One of the two glass plates 3, 7 and the frame 8 limited, airtight closed space 9 is filled with a heat-insulating gas.

The glass plate 3 is provided in its edge region on the back with an opaque coating 10, which hides the frame 4, 8 from the eyes of an observer standing in front of the bottle storage cabinet. In a central region of the door both glass plates 3, 7 transparent and give the view of the interior of the body 1 free. In this a plurality of bottle carriers 11 is arranged, which are each formed by front and rear horizontal support 12 and suspended between the carriers cylinder-segment-shaped shells 13.

A mounted on the outer glass plate 3 handle 14 is bolted through two holes in the glass plate 3 in the outer frame 4.

The four sides of the outer frame 4 are each composed of an outer profile 15, an inner profile 16 and an anchored between the two profiles 15, 16 by a tongue and groove connection magnetic sealing strip 17, the closed door 2 at the front of the Body 1 seals. The inner profile 16, which is directly adjacent to the interior of the refrigeration device, and the outer profile 15 in contact with the ambient air are insulated from each other by the magnetic sealing strips 17 and their inner cavities. Between the inner profile 16 and the inner glass plate 7, a flexible sealing strip 18 is clamped, which prevents cold air from the interior of the device from penetrating between the frame 4, 8 to the outer glass plate 3.

Of the known and therefore not described in detail here multi-joint hinges 5, 6 is in Fig. 2 only one movable hinge element each 19, in which a in cross-section of Fig. 2 L-shaped support member 20 is screwed. The support member 20 of the lower multi-joint hinge has an upper support surface 22 on which, separated by a plurality of rectangular spacers 23, a lower side of the frame 4 rests. The support member 22 forming the horizontal leg of the lower support member 20 is connected to the frame 4 by one or more screws 24 extending through bores of the leg and the spacers 23 of plastic injection molding and engage in an internal thread of the outer profile 15.

Mirror-symmetric thereto, the support member 20 of the upper multi-joint hinge 5 has a frame 4 facing lower support surface 21, and a gap between this support surface 21 and the frame 4 is filled by spacers 23 backlash. Also, the upper support member 20 is bolted to the frame 4.

Fig. 3 shows in an exploded view, the lower multi-joint hinge 6 with its movable hinge member 19, the support member to be screwed thereto 20 and three spacers 23 for filling a gap between the support surface 22 and the frame 4 not shown in this figure. It can be seen that it Holes 25 in the horizontal leg of the support member 20 are slots that are aligned parallel to the door 2 level. At a longitudinal end of the vertical leg of the support member 20, a tab 26 is bent at right angles. A threaded bore 27 passes through the tab 26th

An angle member 28 has a vertical leg 29 which is opposite to the tab 26 in parallel and in which a vertically aligned, aligned with the threaded bore 27 elongated hole 30 is formed. A further bore 31 is formed in a horizontal, the frame 4 facing leg 32 of the angle element 28. The angle member 28 is provided to be screwed by means of a (not shown) screw through the bore 31 and with this aligned holes 33 of the spacers 23 on the frame 4.

To adjust the door 2, the procedure can be as follows: at the completely assembled in the cupboard furniture provided for him bottle storage cabinet is first measured how much the height of the door 2 should be corrected. By loosening the screws 24, which connect the horizontal legs of the support members 20 to the frame 4, the door is removed. According to the desired height change, the number of spacers 23 on the lower support member 20 is reduced or increased by spacers, the previously between the frame and the upper support member 20 were mounted. Subsequently, the door 2 is used again, with all remaining spacers 23 between the frame 4 and the upper support member 20 are used. However, the screws 24 between the support members and the frame are not yet tightened, so that the door remains parallel to its front in the dimension determined by the extent of the slots (25) displaceable.

The door is now initially related to the perspective of Fig. 3 pulled to the right, so that the screws 24 each abut the right edge of the slots (25). Subsequently, a respective screw 34 is screwed through the elongated holes 30 of the two angle elements 28 in the threaded holes 27 of the two support members 20. In this case, the head of the screw 34 finally abuts against the vertical leg 29, so that upon further rotation of the screw 34 via the angle member 28, the door 2 is moved to the left. Thus, following the height adjustment and the position of the door in the lateral direction can be adjusted continuously and with high accuracy.

Fig. 4 shows the support member 20, the angle member 28 and there resting spacers 23 according to a modified embodiment. In this embodiment, in addition to the slot 30, a threaded bore 35 is formed in the vertical leg 29 of the angle member 28, in which a screw 36 engages. This threaded hole 35 is not opposite opening of the tab 26. The screw 36, which thus presses with its tip against the tab 26, can be used to move the door precisely and continuously to the right during the adjustment, or to counter the screw 34 and the door so in an adjusted horizontal position to fix.

Claims (13)

1. Housing for a cabinet-type household appliance, with a carcass (1) and at least one door (2), which is connected hingeably by at least one first and one second multiple-joint hinge (5, 6) to the carcass (1), wherein the door (2) is held on an upper carrier surface (22) of the first multiple-joint hinge (6) and a lower carrier surface (21) of the second multiple-joint hinge, characterised in that the door is held via a plurality of spacers (23) inserted between the carrier surfaces (21, 22) and the door (2).
2. Housing according to claim 1, characterised in that the carrier surfaces (21, 22) are disposed on a carrier element (20), which is disposed on the hinge arm of the first and second multiple-joint hinge (5, 6) coupled to the door (2).
3. Housing according to one of claims 1 or 2, characterised in that the spacers have a rectangular footprint and are made of injection-moulded plastic.
4. Housing according to claim 1 to 3, characterised in that a heat-insulating body of the door (2) is disposed between the carrier surfaces (21, 22) of the multiple-joint hinges (5, 6) and the multiple-joint hinges (5, 6) are hidden behind the edge sections of the door (2) projecting beyond the heat-insulating body.
5. Housing according to one of the preceding claims, characterised in that an outer wall of the door (2) is formed by a glass panel (7).
6. Housing according to one of the preceding claims, characterised in that, at at least one of the multiple-joint hinges (5, 6) the carrier surface (21, 22) is connected to the door (2) by at least one screw (24, 34).
7. Housing according to claim 6, characterised in that the screw (24) extends through a slotted hole (25) of the carrier surface (21, 22).
8. Housing according to claim 7, characterised in that the slotted hole (25) is aligned in parallel to the door (2).
9. Housing according to claim 8, characterised in that the multiple-joint hinge (5, 6) has a first lug (26) connected to the carrier surface (21, 22) and the door (2) has a second lug (29) lying opposite the first lug (26), which are aligned at right angles to the alignment of the slotted hole (25) and are provided with holes (27, 30) aligned with one another for accepting a screw (34).
10. Housing according to claim 9, characterised in that one of the holes is a threaded hole (27).
11. Housing according to claim 9 or 10, characterised in that the other hole is a vertically-aligned slotted hole (30).
12. Housing according to claim 9 to 11, characterised in that the second lug (29) is part of a component (28) screwed to the door (2).
13. Housing according to claim 12, characterised in that the spacers (23) are dimensioned, in a state whereby they are installed between the carrier surface (21, 22) of the one multiple-joint hinge (5, 6, 19) and the door (2), to extend to between the component (28) and the door (2).

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