Patent Application
20050278974
This application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 2004-44322, filed on Jun. 16, 2004 in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a clothes dryer and a method of displaying a drying time on the same, and, more particularly, to a clothes dryer which displays a predicted drying time corresponding to a drying condition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a clothes dryer includes a housing defining an appearance of the dryer, a drum equipped in the housing to receive clothes to be dried, a heating duct generating hot air supplied to the drum, a hot air-suction pathway guiding the hot air generated from the heating duct to the drum, and a hot air-exhaust pathway guiding the hot air exhausted from the drum to the outside of the housing.
The drum is rotatably positioned in the housing, and a blowing fan is positioned above the hot air-exhaust pathway to generate a flowing force of the hot air. The clothes dryer is provided with a driving motor for operating the drum and the blowing fan, and as the drum and the blowing fan are simultaneously driven by the operation of the driving motor, the hot air dries the clothes while circulating around the drum and respective ducts.
Meanwhile, a conventional clothes dryer further includes a temperature sensor detecting the temperature in the drum, and a humidity sensor detecting the humidity in the drum, thereby determining and displaying a predicted drying time of the clothes received in the drum using the temperature and the humidity detected by the temperature sensor and the humidity sensor, respectively.
However, since the conventional clothes dryer determines the predicted drying time without considering an ambient temperature, there is a problem in that the predicted drying time is inaccurate. That is, when determining the predicted drying time, the conventional clothes dryer does not take into account that a higher ambient temperature results in a shorter drying time and a lower ambient temperature results in a longer drying time. As a result, there is a problem in the conventional clothes dryer that the predicted drying time does not coincide with the actual drying time.
Furthermore, since the conventional clothes dryer determines the predicted drying time by measuring the temperature or the humidity in the drum without determining a drying state of the clothes, there is a difference between the predicted drying time and the actual drying time.
Accordingly, it is an aspect of the invention to provide a clothes dryer and a method of displaying a drying time on the same, which determines a predicted drying time considering an ambient temperature of the clothes dryer.
Additional aspects and/or advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
The foregoing and/or other aspects of the present invention are achieved by providing a clothes dryer and a method of displaying the drying time, which displays the predicted drying time corresponding to a drying state of clothes to be dried.
It is another aspect of the present invention to provide a method of displaying a drying time of a clothes dryer, the method including measuring an ambient temperature of the clothes dryer, and displaying a predicted drying time of an object to be dried in the clothes dryer based upon the measured ambient temperature.
These and/or other aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent and more readily appreciated from the following description of the embodiments, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, of which:
Reference will now be made in detail to the embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to the like elements throughout. The embodiments are described below to explain the present invention by referring to the figures.
Referring to
The housing 10 includes an input port 11 in a front portion thereof, to input and remove the clothes, and a door 12 hinged to one side of the input port 11 to open or close the input port 11. The housing 10 further includes a control panel 13 at an upper portion of the front portion thereof, including an operating button (not shown) to control operations of respective driving elements, a display 15 (shown in
The drum 20 includes a front panel 21 facing a door 12 and having an opening at the center of the drum 20, a rear panel 23 provided at a rear portion in the housing and having a hot air-intake port 27 at an upper portion of the rear panel 23, and a side panel 22 rotatably provided between the front panel 21 and the rear panel 23.
The front panel 21 is provided at a lower portion thereof with two bar-shaped electrodes 28 elongated in the lengthwise direction and having sides slightly protruded in a direction of the rear panel 23 of the drum 20. These two bar-shaped electrodes 28 constitute a touch sensor 71 shown in
A plurality of lifters 24 are arranged on an inner peripheral surface of the drum 20 while protruding to the center of the drum 20 and extending in the longitudinal direction along the drum 20, raising the clothes (not shown) to the top of the drum 20 and then releasing the clothes to be dropped to the bottom of the drum 20 according to a rotation of the side panel 22, thereby uniformly mixing the clothes. The side panel 22 is supported at both inner ends thereof by supporting members 25 protruded from the front panel 21 and the rear panel 23 to the side panel 22, respectively, and sliding pads 26 are interposed between the supporting members 25 and both ends of the drum 20, respectively, to allow an easy sliding movement of the side panel 22.
A heater 31 is installed in a heating duct 30 to heat air taken in from the inside of housing 10 to the heating duct 30. The heating duct 30 is provided at a front end thereof with an intake port 32 to intake the air from the inside of the housing 10, and at a rear end of the heating duct 30 with an exhaust port 33 communicated to a hot air-intake pathway 40 to send heated air to the drum 20.
The hot air-intake pathway 40 having one end communicated with the exhaust port 33 of the heating duct 30, and another end communicated with the hot air-intake port 27 of the rear panel 23 of the drum after being extended and bent to an upper portion of the housing 10 at the rear of the housing 10. Furthermore, the hot air-exhaust pathway 50a and 50b is connected to a lower portion of the front panel 21 of the drum 20, and communicated with an outside of the housing 10 along a lower surface of the housing 10. A blowing fan 51 to supply a flowing force required to intake and exhaust the hot air, and an exhaust temperature sensor 52 positioned within the air-exhaust pathway 50a and 50b, to detect a temperature of the exhausted air.
When rotating the blowing fan 51, the hot air generated in the heating duct 30 is guided into the drum 20. The hot air supplied into the drum 20 evaporates moisture contained in the clothes, and is then exhausted to the outside of the housing 10 along the air-exhaust pathway 50a and 50b.
The driving motor 53 transmits a rotational force both to the blowing fan 51 and the side panel 22 of the drum 20, and thus a driving shaft including portions 54a and 54b of the driving motor 50 is extended in the longitudinal direction. Here, the blowing fan 51 is connected to the portion 54a of the driving shaft extended to the front side of the driving motor 53, and a pulley 55 for driving the side panel 22 of the drum is fixed to the portion 54b of the driving shaft extended to the rear side of the driving motor 53. The pulley 55 is connected to the side panel 22 of the drum 20 by a transmission belt 56, so that the rotational force of the driving motor 50 is transmitted to the side panel 22 of the drum 20. Accordingly, the blowing fan 51 and the side panel 22 of the drum 22 are simultaneously rotated.
Referring to
The touch sensor 71 includes the two bar-shaped electrodes 28, and a pulse generating portion 72 to generate a pulse when the current flows between the electrodes 28. When the clothes containing the moisture contact two electrodes 28 of the touch sensor 71, currents are generated between the two electrodes 28 through the moisture of the clothes, whereby the pulse is generated and inputted into the microcomputer 70.
When a large amount of moisture is contained in the clothes, the currents are easily generated between the electrodes 28 through the moisture upon contact of the clothes with the two electrodes 28, and thus the number of the pulses generated for a predetermined time is increased. However, when a small amount of moisture is contained in the clothes, the currents are not easily generated between the electrodes 28 even though the clothes contact the two electrodes 28 at the same time, and thus the number of the pulses generated for the predetermined time is decreased in comparison to when a large amount of moisture is contained in the clothes. That is, the number of the pulses generated for a predetermined time is dependent upon the amount of moisture contained in the clothes inputted in the drum. Therefore, the amount of moisture contained in the clothes inputted may be determined.
The microcomputer 70 stores drying time information (shown in Table 1 of
As the ambient temperature is lowered, the temperature of air introduced into the heating duct 30 is also lowered, thereby lowering the temperature of the hot air heated by the heater 31 and supplied to the drum 20, so that the drying time is increased. Thus, as shown in Table 1 of
An initial predicted drying time of Table 1 of
The predicted drying time displayed in Table 1 is revised, as shown in Table 2 of
Furthermore, the number of pulses per unit time means the number of pulses generated from the pulse generation portion 72 (shown in
When the increase range in exhaust temperature is approximately 11˜20° C. and the number of pulses per unit time is approximately 100˜200, as in Table 2 of
On the contrary, when the increase range in exhaust temperature is lower than 11˜20° C. (that is, when the clothes received in the drum 20 have a weight more than 7 lb as the reference amount of the clothes) or the number of pulses per unit time is higher than 100˜200 (that is, when the clothes received the drum 20 contain more than 75% moisture as the reference amount of moisture contained in clothes), the predicted drying time initially displayed on the display 15 according to Table 1 of
Operations of the clothes dryer shown in
When the heater 31 and the blowing fan 51 are operated, hot air is supplied to the drum 20 through the hot air-intake pathway 40, evaporates moisture contained in clothes, and is then exhausted to the outside of the clothes dryer through the hot air-exhaust pathway 50a and 50b.
From operation 80, the process moves to operation 82, where the microcomputer 70 displays a predicted drying time corresponding to the ambient temperature measured, with reference to Table 1 of
From operation 82, the process moves to operation 84 where when a first predetermined time after the measurement of the exhaust temperature passes, the exhaust temperature is measured again with the exhaust temperature sensor 52, and the increase range in exhaust temperature is determined by comparing this measurement with the measured exhaust temperature obtained in operation 80. At this time, the first predetermined time may be appropriately selected through experimentation.
From operation 84, the process moves to operation 86, where the number of pulses, generated from the touch sensor 71 during a second predetermined time after the drying operation, is determined. The second predetermined time may be appropriately selected through experimentation.
From operation 86, the process moves to operation 88, where when the increase range in exhaust temperature and the number of pulses from the touch sensor 71 are determined, the microcomputer 70 displays a predicted drying time after correcting the initially predicted drying time with reference to Table 2 of
As is described in detail above, the present invention changes the initially predicted drying time according to the ambient temperature, thereby displaying the predicted drying time corresponding to the actual drying time.
Furthermore, the initially predicted drying time is changed according to the amounts of the clothes inputted into the drum and the amount of moisture contained in the clothes as well as the ambient temperature, so that an accurately predicted drying time can be displayed.
Although a few embodiments of the present invention have been shown and described, it would be appreciated by those skilled in the art that changes may be made in this embodiment without departing from the principles and spirit of the invention, the scope of which is defined in the claims and their equivalents.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004-44322 | Jun 2004 | KR | national |
