Refrigeration equipment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional refrigerated cabinets with laterally movable swing doors face challenges in door guidance during lateral movement, leading to potential jamming and inefficient access for loading and unloading food.
Innovation Solution
The refrigerated cabinet features transparent, frameless doors that can pivot and slide along a guide arrangement, supported by upper and lower carriages connected via a vertically extending rod, ensuring synchronized movement and preventing tilting through a mechanical coupling of combing elements and sections, allowing for significant enlargement of the opening width for easy access.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If doors are mounted on slides to enable lateral movement for larger opening width, then access for loading and unloading food is improved, but door guidance during lateral movement becomes complex and prone to jamming
Solution Approach 1:
The door assembly is segmented into multiple independent components: door panels, carriages, rollers, and guide rails. Each component performs a specific function - carriages support doors, rollers enable smooth movement, and guide rails provide lateral guidance. This segmentation simplifies the overall guidance mechanism while maintaining the ability to achieve large opening widths by moving multiple door segments independently.
Solution Approach 2:
Carriages act as intermediary elements between the doors and the guide arrangement. Each carriage is connected to a door and contains rollers that contact the guide rails, mediating the lateral movement. This intermediary structure simplifies the direct connection between doors and guides, reducing complexity and preventing jamming by providing a buffered, roller-based interface.
2Reliability
If multiple rollers with different axis orientations are used in carriages, then guidance precision and stability are improved, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Different rollers within the same carriage have different axis orientations tailored to their specific guidance needs. For example, some rollers may have horizontal axes for lateral guidance while others have vertical axes for preventing tilting. This local differentiation of roller orientations provides optimized guidance stability for each specific movement requirement without requiring all rollers to be complex multi-axis components.
Solution Approach 2:
The axis orientation parameter of rollers is varied within carriages to achieve different guidance functions. By changing this single parameter (axis direction) rather than the entire roller structure, the system achieves reliable multi-directional guidance while maintaining simple, manufacturable roller components that can be produced using standard machining processes.
3Reliability
If upper door bearings are designed to be floating to prevent jamming, then reliability is improved, but manufacturing precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The upper door bearings are designed as floating bearings that can dynamically adjust their position within a limited range. This dynamic capability allows the bearings to self-compensate for minor variations in door weight, slide wear, and installation tolerances, preventing jamming while maintaining reasonable manufacturing precision requirements. The floating design provides adaptability without demanding ultra-precise manufacturing.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This design enables smooth, low-wear horizontal movement of doors, preventing jamming and allowing for easy loading and unloading of food, while maintaining a clear view and minimizing visual obstruction.
Implementation Method 1
The lower carriage has one or more rollers, which preferably have or have a horizontally oriented axis of rotation. The lower guide can have one or more flat running surfaces, with the guide rollers of the carriage each resting on the or one of the guide surfaces and being moved rollingly along the respective guide surface when the door connected to the corresponding roller(s) moves.
Implementation Method 2
The rod also includes an upper combing element which is in operative connection, in particular in direct contact, with a, preferably stationary, upper combing section of the refrigerated cabinet. The rod also comprises a lower combing element which is in operative connection, in particular in direct contact, with a, preferably stationary, lower combing section of the refrigeration cabinet.
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
AI summary
Refrigerated cabinet (1), wherein the refrigerated cabinet (1) comprises several doors (3) and a receiving compartment (2) for food, wherein the doors (3) are each mounted in an upper area on an upper slide (6) and in a lower area on a lower slide (7), wherein the mounting is designed such that the doors (3) are each pivotable between an open position and a closed position, wherein the upper slide (6) is slidably mounted along an upper guide (8) of the refrigerated cabinet (1) and the lower slide (7) is slidably mounted along a lower guide (9) of the refrigerated cabinet (1), so that the doors (3) are laterally movable.According to the invention, it is proposed that an upper slide (6) and a lower slide (7), which are connected to the same door (3), are coupled via a vertically extending rod (4), wherein the rod (4) is rotatably mounted on the upper slide (6) via an upper pivot bearing (23) and on the lower slide (7) via a lower pivot bearing (24), wherein the rod (4) has an upper comb element (5) and a lower comb element (12), wherein the refrigerated display case (1) has an upper comb section (13), preferably stationary, which is operatively connected to the upper comb element (5), and a lower comb section (14), preferably stationary, which is operatively connected to the lower comb element (12), so that the doors (3) are moved laterally by the interaction of the comb elements (5, 12) and the comb sections (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 12 ... 14) are always guided in a way that prevents tipping.