Floating Hinge Connection for Household Appliance Door Wear Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing household appliance hinges, particularly those in ovens with horizontally pivoting doors, face high component wear and noise due to unbalanced distance tolerances between the oven front and door, leading to premature failure.
Innovation Solution
A floating hinge connection system that allows for adjustable positioning and movement to balance tolerances between the door and the appliance, featuring slotted or hole-based mounting for easy installation and robust operation, enabling the hinges to cushion wear and tear and simplify mounting.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Stability of the object's composition
If fixed hinge mounting is used to ensure stable door position, then door positioning stability is improved, but distance tolerances between oven front and door leaf cause high component wear and early failure
Solution Approach 1:
The hinge mounting is changed from a fixed rigid connection to a dynamic adjustable connection. The hinge can be positioned at different locations along the mounting surface, allowing it to adapt to tolerance variations while maintaining stable door positioning and reducing component wear.
Solution Approach 2:
The mounting position parameter of the hinge is made variable rather than fixed. By allowing the hinge to be positioned at different coordinates on the mounting surface, the system can compensate for distance tolerances between the oven front and door leaf, thereby improving reliability without sacrificing stability.
2Reliability
If precision manufacturing is applied to reduce distance tolerances, then hinge wear is reduced, but manufacturing cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of requiring precise fixed positioning through complex manufacturing, the hinge mounting is designed to be dynamically adjustable. This allows standard manufacturing processes to be used while achieving the same effect of reduced hinge wear through post-manufacturing position adjustment.
Solution Approach 2:
The hinge mounting system enables self-adjustment to compensate for manufacturing tolerances. The ability to reposition the hinge allows the system to self-correct for distance variations without requiring extremely precise manufacturing, thereby simplifying the manufacturing process while maintaining reliability.
3Reliability
If adjustable hinge positioning is implemented to balance tolerances, then component wear is reduced, but mounting complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The mounting structure incorporates dynamic positioning capability that allows the hinge to be adjusted to different positions. This adjustable feature enables tolerance compensation and reduced component wear while adding only minimal complexity to the mounting structure through movable mounting elements.
Data Source
AI summary
A household appliance includes a processing chamber having a front loading opening, a door, and hinges to join the door to a remaining structure of the household appliance and to enable the door to horizontally pivot for closing the loading opening. At least one of the hinges is floatingly joined to the remaining structure of the household appliance.