Refrigerator Tray Rollerless Fixed Bearing to Reduce Lateral Movement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing household refrigerators with food-receiving trays often experience undesirable lateral and offset movements due to roller-based guide systems, leading to inefficient and user-unfriendly tray movement.
Innovation Solution
A rollerless guide device with a stationary guide rail and a separate guide element on the food receiving tray, forming a fixed bearing that ensures linear movement without rollers, reducing assembly and movement tolerances, and preventing sideways movements by using a guide element with a sliding surface and anti-tip functionality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If rollers are used in the guide device, then the tray can move along the guide rail, but lateral and offset movements occur causing unwanted tray displacement
Solution Approach 1:
The patent removes the rollers from the guide device, extracting the problematic rolling contact mechanism that caused lateral and offset movements. The guide rail and guide element work directly without intermediate rolling elements, eliminating the source of tray displacement while maintaining smooth movement through direct sliding contact.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the roller-based mechanical guidance system with a direct guide rail and guide element contact system. This substitution eliminates the complex roller mechanism and its associated tolerances that led to lateral movements, achieving more precise tray positioning through a simpler direct contact guidance mechanism.
2Ease of operation
If rollers are arranged on the tray or in the guide rail, then the tray can be guided, but assembly tolerances and movement tolerances increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the rollers from the system entirely, eliminating the additional components and their associated assembly tolerances. The guide rail and guide element are designed to work in direct contact, removing the need for precise roller assembly and reducing the cumulative tolerance stack-up that occurs with multiple moving parts.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the guidance function into a simpler direct contact system where the guide element on the tray engages directly with the guide rail. This consolidation eliminates the separate roller component and its mounting requirements, reducing the number of assembly steps and tolerance accumulation points in the guidance system.
3Manufacturing precision
If a roller-free fixed bearing is used, then lateral movements are prevented and linear movement is achieved, but the guide device structure becomes more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The patent takes out the complex roller mechanism and replaces it with a streamlined guide rail and guide element design. The guide element is integrated directly onto the tray with a geometry that naturally prevents lateral movement through its engagement with the guide rail, achieving linear movement without the need for additional bearing components or complex mechanical structures.
Solution Approach 2:
The guide element is designed with an asymmetric cross-sectional geometry that fits into the guide rail in a specific orientation. This asymmetric design inherently prevents lateral and rotational movements by allowing engagement only in the correct position, ensuring linear tray movement without requiring symmetric bearing structures or additional constraint mechanisms.
4Ease of manufacture
If guide elements are separate from the guide rail, then assembly is flexible, but the number of components increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the guide element with the tray as a single integrated component. The guide element is formed as an integral part of the tray structure, eliminating the need for separate guide element components and their associated fasteners and assembly steps. This integration maintains assembly flexibility while reducing the total component count in the guidance system.
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
The solution provides a user-friendly, mechanically simple, and effective guide system that minimizes lateral movements and tip-over risks, ensuring precise and linear tray movement, enhancing the storage and guidance concept.
Implementation Method 1
The guide rail is arranged so as to engage with this guide element, thereby forming a roller-free fixed bearing. As a result, the food receiving tray can be guided without rollers using the guide device.
Data Source
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AI summary
Household refrigerating appliance (1) with an inner container (3) which defines a receiving chamber (4) for receiving food, with a separate food receiving tray (6) and with a guide device (10, 11) with which the food receiving tray (6) can be guided, wherein the guide device (10, 11) has a guide rail (12) which is arranged on an inner side of the inner container (3), wherein at least one guide element (17, 30) of the guide device (10, 11) is fixedly arranged on the food receiving tray (6), wherein the guide rail (12) is arranged to interlock with the guide element (17, 30) so that a rollerless fixed bearing (21) is formed, so that the food receiving tray (6) is guided without rollers by the guide device (10, 11).