Heating Cooking Apparatus Locking Mechanism for One-Handed Opening
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing heating cooking apparatuses require a two-stage mechanical operation to open the door, which can be cumbersome and inconvenient, especially requiring both hands and sometimes leading to forgotten door locking.
Innovation Solution
A heating cooking apparatus with a locking mechanism that allows one-handed, non-mechanical operation to unlock the door and automatically locks it, using a displacement transmission mechanism and a driving unit to move a locking cam to a non-limiting position in response to an operation, enabling easy door opening and automatic locking.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a two-stage mechanical operation is used to unlock and open the door, then the door locking reliability is improved, but the ease of operation deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the traditional two-stage mechanical operation (unlocking followed by opening) with a single-stage mechanical operation. The locking mechanism is designed such that the door can be opened directly by a single pulling motion on the handle, eliminating the need for separate unlocking steps while maintaining secure locking during heating operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the unlocking and door opening operations into a single action. The handle is designed to simultaneously perform the unlocking function and the door opening function in one continuous motion, reducing the number of steps from two to one while maintaining the reliability of the locking mechanism.
2Reliability
If a two-stage mechanical operation is required, then the door locking security is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and eliminates the unnecessary first stage of mechanical operation (separate unlocking step) from the door opening process. By redesigning the locking mechanism to allow direct opening, the operation complexity is reduced from two stages to one stage, while the locking security is maintained through the handle's integrated locking design.
3Reliability
If manual door locking operation is required, then the door security is improved, but the ease of operation deteriorates due to requiring both hands
Solution Approach 1:
The locking mechanism is designed to be self-servicing through the handle's integrated design. When the user pulls the handle, the mechanism automatically performs the unlocking action and opens the door without requiring separate manual locking operations or two hands. The single-handed pulling motion simultaneously completes both unlocking and opening functions.
Data Source
AI summary
A heating cooking apparatus includes a main body, a door, a latch head provided at the door, a holding member provided at the main body and that holds the latch head to cause the door to be in a locked state, a door opening button, a door unlock key, a displacement transmission mechanism that transmits a displacement of the door opening button to cause that displacement to release the locked state of the door by the holding member, a locking cam that is movable between a limiting position at which at least one of the displacement of the door opening button and the transmission by the displacement transmission mechanism is limited, and a non-limiting position at which neither is limited, and a driving unit that causes the locking cam to move to the non-limiting position in response to an operation of the door unlock key.