Patent Application
20240060647
Cooking appliances that include ovens, e.g., ranges, wall-mounted ovens, and the like, generally incorporate multiple cooking elements disposed at different locations in an oven cavity. One or more bake or baking cooking elements are generally positioned on the bottom or underneath the bottom of the oven cavity, while one or more broil or broiler cooking elements are generally positioned near the top of the oven cavity (for the purpose of simplification, this description will use the term “cooking element” to refer to any of the various heat sources that may be utilized to generate the heat required for cooking, which may include, but are not limited to, resistive electrical heating elements, gas burners, infrared heaters, quartz heaters, etc.) Some cooking appliances may also include multiple ovens, each having multiple cooking burners within, and as such, some cooking appliances may include a multitude of cooking elements disposed therein.
In cooking appliances that rely on electrical cooking elements, maintaining a consistent temperature throughout an oven cavity during a cooking cycle that relies on a temperature setpoint (e.g., a bake, convection, roast, or similar cooking cycle) may be assisted by selectively energizing different cooking elements at different points in the cooking cycle to generate heat in different areas of the oven cavity. In cooking appliances that rely on gas burners as oven cooking elements, however, the gas burners are generally operated using hot surface igniters, and the amount of time required to ignite the gas burners using such hot surface igniters generally precludes any cycling of multiple cooking elements in order to maintain a temperature setpoint. Furthermore, due to airflow constraints, many cooking appliances are not designed to allow multiple gas burners to operate at the same time.
The herein-described embodiments address these and other problems associated with the art by providing a cooking appliance and method of operation thereof in which a temperature setpoint is reestablished and maintained in a gas oven using multiple gas burners. In some instances, the multiple gas burners may be cycled using predetermined activation durations for each gas burner when reestablishing the temperature setpoint, and in some instances, the gas burners may be cycled over multiple iterations in order to reestablish the temperature setpoint. Furthermore, in some instances, each gas burner may include a spark igniter that may be used to minimize the amount of time required to ignite the gas burner when reestablishing the temperature setpoint.
Therefore, consistent with one aspect of the invention, a cooking appliance may include a housing including an oven cavity, a plurality of gas burners configured to generate heat within the oven cavity, a plurality of gas valves, each gas valve in fluid communication with a respective gas burner among the plurality of gas burners, a plurality of igniters, each igniter positioned proximate to a respective gas burner among the plurality of gas burners and configured to ignite gas supplied to the respective gas burner, and a controller coupled to the plurality of dedicated gas valves and the plurality of igniters, the controller configured to control the plurality of gas valves and the plurality of igniters to maintain a temperature setpoint during a cooking cycle, the controller further configured to reestablish the temperature setpoint during the cooking cycle by controlling the plurality of gas valves and the plurality of igniters to activate each of first and second gas burners among the plurality of gas burners over multiple iterations.
In some embodiments, the first gas burner is a bake gas burner disposed proximate a bottom of the oven cavity and the second gas burner is a broil gas burner disposed proximate a top of the oven cavity. Also, in some embodiments, the plurality of gas burners further includes a convection cooking element, and the controller is configured to, during a first iteration of the multiple iterations performed when reestablishing the temperature setpoint, activate each of the bake gas burner, the broil gas burner and the convection cooking element. Further, in some embodiments, each of the plurality of igniters is a spark igniter.
Some embodiments may further include a plurality of ignition sensors, each ignition sensor positioned proximate to a respective gas burner among the plurality of gas burners and configured to detect ignition of the respective gas burner, and where the controller is configured to confirm activation of each of the first and second gas burners in response to detecting ignition of each of the first and second gas burners with the respective ignition sensors for the first and second gas burners during activation of each of the first and second gas burners.
In some embodiments, each of the plurality of gas valves is a dedicated gas valve, the cooking appliance further includes a shared gas valve in fluid communication with a gas supply and with each of the plurality of dedicated gas valves, and the controller is configured to activate the first gas burner by activating the shared gas valve and the respective dedicated gas valve for the first gas burner to supply gas from the gas supply to the first gas burner, and concurrently activating all of the plurality of igniters while gas is supplied to the first gas burner.
In addition, in some embodiments, the controller is configured to, during a first iteration of the multiple iterations performed when reestablishing the temperature setpoint, sequentially activate the first and second gas burners. In some embodiments, the controller is configured to, during a first iteration of the multiple iterations performed when reestablishing the temperature setpoint, activate the first gas burner for a first predetermined activation duration, and activate the second gas burner for a second predetermined activation duration. In addition, in some embodiments, the controller is configured to, during a first iteration of the multiple iterations performed when reestablishing the temperature setpoint, activate the first gas burner until a temperature in the oven cavity reaches a predetermined temperature, and activate the second gas burner for a predetermined activation duration. Moreover, in some embodiments, the controller is configured to, during a first iteration of the multiple iterations performed when reestablishing the temperature setpoint, activate the first gas burner until a temperature in the oven cavity reaches a first predetermined temperature, and activate the second gas burner until the temperature in the oven cavity reaches a second predetermined temperature.
In some embodiments, the multiple iterations includes at least first and second iterations, and the controller is configured to, during the second iteration, vary an activation sequence, an actuation overlap, a predetermined activation duration of the first gas burner, a predetermined activation duration of the second gas burner, a predetermined temperature at which to deactivate the first gas burner, or a predetermined temperature at which to deactivate the second gas burner relative to the first iteration.
Some embodiments may also include at least one non-gas cooking element disposed in the oven cavity, and the controller is further configured to activate the non-gas cooking element when reestablishing the temperature setpoint. Moreover, in some embodiments, the controller is configured to, during a first iteration of the multiple iterations performed when reestablishing the temperature setpoint, overlap activation of the first and second gas burners during at least a portion of the first iteration. In some embodiments, the cooking cycle is a bake cycle, a convection bake cycle, or a convection roast cycle.
Consistent with another aspect of the invention, a cooking appliance may include a housing including an oven cavity, a plurality of gas burners configured to generate heat within the oven cavity, a plurality of gas valves, each gas valve in fluid communication with a respective gas burner among the plurality of gas burners, a plurality of igniters, each igniter positioned proximate to a respective gas burner among the plurality of gas burners and configured to ignite gas supplied to the respective gas burner, and a controller coupled to the plurality of dedicated gas valves and the plurality of igniters, the controller configured to control the plurality of gas valves and the plurality of igniters to maintain a temperature setpoint during a cooking cycle, the controller further configured to reestablish the temperature setpoint during the cooking cycle by controlling the plurality of gas valves and the plurality of igniters to activate each of first and second gas burners among the plurality of gas burners for respective first and second predetermined activation durations.
In addition, in some embodiments, the first gas burner is a bake gas burner disposed proximate a bottom of the oven cavity and the second gas burner is a broil gas burner disposed proximate a top of the oven cavity. In some embodiments, each of the plurality of igniters is a spark igniter. Moreover, in some embodiments, the controller is configured to activate each of first and second gas burners among the plurality of gas burners for the respective first and second predetermined activation durations during a first iteration among a plurality of iterations performed to reestablish the temperature setpoint during the cooking cycle, and the controller is further configured to activate each of the first and second gas burners during a second iteration among the plurality of iterations performed to reestablish the temperature setpoint during the cooking cycle. Also, in some embodiments, the controller is configured to, during the second iteration, vary an activation sequence, an actuation overlap, a predetermined activation duration of the first gas burner, a predetermined activation duration of the second gas burner, a predetermined temperature at which to deactivate the first gas burner, or a predetermined temperature at which to deactivate the second gas burner relative to the first iteration.
Consistent with another aspect of the invention, a cooking appliance may include a housing including an oven cavity, a plurality of gas burners configured to generate heat within the oven cavity, a plurality of gas valves, each gas valve in fluid communication with a respective gas burner among the plurality of gas burners, a plurality of spark igniters, each spark igniter positioned proximate to a respective gas burner among the plurality of gas burners and configured to ignite gas supplied to the respective gas burner, and a controller coupled to the plurality of dedicated gas valves and the plurality of igniters, the controller configured to control the plurality of gas valves and the plurality of spark igniters to maintain a temperature setpoint during a cooking cycle, the controller further configured to reestablish the temperature setpoint during the cooking cycle by controlling the plurality of gas valves and the plurality of spark igniters to activate each of first and second gas burners among the plurality of gas burners.
Some embodiments may also include a method of operating any of the cooking appliances discussed above.
These and other advantages and features, which characterize the invention, are set forth in the claims annexed hereto and forming a further part hereof. However, for a better understanding of the invention, and of the advantages and objectives attained through its use, reference should be made to the Drawings, and to the accompanying descriptive matter, in which there is described example embodiments of the invention. This summary is merely provided to introduce a selection of concepts that are further described below in the detailed description, and is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in limiting the scope of the claimed subject matter.
Turning now to the drawings, wherein like numbers denote like parts throughout the several views,
Cooking appliance 10 may also include various user interface devices, including, for example, control knobs 28 for controlling burners 16, a control panel 30 for controlling oven 18 and/or burners 16, and a display 32 for providing visual feedback as to the activation state of the cooking appliance. It will be appreciated that cooking appliance 10 may include various types of user controls in other embodiments, including various combinations of switches, buttons, knobs and/or sliders, typically disposed at the rear or front (or both) of the cooking appliance. Further, in some embodiments, one or more touch screens may be employed for interaction with a user. As such, in some embodiments, display 32 may be touch sensitive to receive user input in addition to displaying status information and/or otherwise interacting with a user. In still other embodiments, cooking appliance 10 may be controllable remotely, e.g., via a smartphone, tablet, personal digital assistant or other networked computing device, e.g., using a web interface or a dedicated app.
Display 32 may also vary in different embodiments, and may include individual indicators, segmented alphanumeric displays, and/or dot matrix displays, and may be based on various types of display technologies, including LEDs, vacuum fluorescent displays, incandescent lights, etc. Further, in some embodiments audio feedback may be provided to a user via one or more speakers, and in some embodiments, user input may be received via a spoken or gesture-based interface.
As noted above, cooking appliance 10 of
In turn, a cooking element may be considered to include practically any type of energy-producing element used in residential applications in connection with cooking food, e.g., employing various cooking technologies such as electric, gas, light, microwaves, induction, convection, radiation, etc. In the case of an oven, for example, one or more cooking elements therein may be gas, electric, light, or microwave cooking elements in some embodiments, while in the case of a stovetop, one or more cooking elements therein may be gas, electric, or inductive cooking elements in some embodiments. Further, it will be appreciated that any number of cooking elements may be provided in a cooking appliance (including multiple cooking elements for performing different types of cooking cycles such as baking or broiling, including multiple bake and/or multiple broil cooking elements, as well as one or more convection cooking elements), and that multiple types of cooking elements may be combined in some embodiments, e.g., combinations of microwave and light cooking elements in some oven embodiments.
A cooking appliance consistent with the invention also generally includes one or more controllers configured to control the cooking elements and otherwise perform cooking operations at the direction of a user.
As shown in
Controller 42 may also be interfaced with various sensors 58 located to sense environmental conditions inside of and/or external to cooking appliance 40, e.g., one or more temperature sensors, humidity sensors, air quality sensors, smoke sensors, carbon monoxide sensors, odor sensors and/or electronic nose sensors, among others. Such sensors may be internal or external to cooking appliance 40, and may be coupled wirelessly to controller 42 in some embodiments. Sensors 58 may include, for example, one or more temperature sensors for sensing an air temperature within an oven cavity, including, for example, a temperature sensor for sensing temperature in a center of the oven cavity and/or one or more temperature sensors for sensing temperature in the top and/or bottom of the oven cavity.
In some embodiments, controller 42 may also be coupled to one or more network interfaces 60, e.g., for interfacing with external devices via wired and/or wireless networks such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, cellular and other suitable networks, collectively represented in
In some embodiments, controller 42 may operate under the control of an operating system and may execute or otherwise rely upon various computer software applications, components, programs, objects, modules, data structures, etc. In addition, controller 42 may also incorporate hardware logic to implement some or all of the functionality disclosed herein. Further, in some embodiments, the sequences of operations performed by controller 42 to implement the embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented using program code including one or more instructions that are resident at various times in various memory and storage devices, and that, when read and executed by one or more hardware-based processors, perform the operations embodying desired functionality. Moreover, in some embodiments, such program code may be distributed as a program product in a variety of forms, and that the invention applies equally regardless of the particular type of computer readable media used to actually carry out the distribution, including, for example, non-transitory computer readable storage media. In addition, it will be appreciated that the various operations described herein may be combined, split, reordered, reversed, varied, omitted, parallelized and/or supplemented with other techniques known in the art, and therefore, the invention is not limited to the particular sequences of operations described herein.
Numerous variations and modifications to the cooking appliances illustrated in
The ovens used in residential cooking appliances commonly include multiple cooking elements, including one or more bake cooking elements disposed near the bottom of an oven cavity, one or more broil cooking elements disposed near the top of an oven cavity, and in some instances one or more convection cooking elements used with a fan that circulates hot air in a convection cycle. Some cooking appliances also include multiple ovens, so it would not be uncommon for a cooking appliance to include four or more cooking elements.
For gas ovens, where the cooking elements are gas burners supplied by a gas supply, conventionally each gas burner is controlled individually, with its own gas valve controlling gas flow and igniter for igniting the gas burner (typically implemented using a hot surface igniter), as the technology is both common and low cost. However, as the number of gas burners in a cooking appliance increases, it becomes increasingly cost prohibitive to control each gas burner individually.
In some embodiments consistent with the invention, however, a multi-burner gas oven control system may be used to combine the control of multiple gas burners to a single or common control circuit or controller. In a multi-burner gas oven control system, a central gas control mechanism may be used, including a set of shared and dedicated gas valves. A common or shared gas valve allows/prevents gas flow to the dedicated gas valves, and each dedicated gas valve is dedicated to a single gas burner. Thus, in order for gas flow to reach an individual gas burner, both the shared gas valve and that burner's individual dedicated gas valve must be activated.
In addition, in some embodiments, each gas burner may be equipped with its own igniter, and in some embodiments, with its own ignition sensor (e.g., a flame detector), and when any selected gas burner is ignited, the igniters for all gas burners are concurrently activated while gas is supplied to the selected gas burner via the activation of both the shared gas valve and the dedicated gas valve for the selected gas burner.
By concurrently activating all igniters, in the event of a gas valve failure or miswiring of the control system (e.g., wiring the igniter, ignition sensor and/or dedicated gas valve for one gas burner to the control inputs for a different gas burner), ignition of gas unintentionally output by any gas burner will be ignited, rather than building up in the oven cavity. Moreover, where an ignition sensor is used, the ignition sensor may be used to detect the ignition of an unintended gas burner and enable the control system to shut down the oven and/or alert a user of the potential error.
In addition, in some embodiments, a control system may include software and/or hardware to interlock one or more gas burners, such that certain gas burners are not allowed to be operated simultaneously.
A controller 138, e.g., a microprocessor, a microcontroller, a control circuit, etc. (including any supporting hardware circuitry), is electrically coupled to each gas valve 128-136 to selectively activate each gas valve 128-136. In some embodiments, each gas valve 128-136 is an on/off valve, such that each gas burner has a fixed output power or level. In other embodiments, any of gas valves 128-136 may be variable gas valves, or additional variable gas valves may be included in the gas flow paths, in order to regulate the output level of one or more of the gas burners.
Controller 138 may also be coupled to a user interface 140, e.g., a display, one or more indicators, a touch screen, a set of physical controls such as buttons, switches, knobs, etc., a remote device such as a mobile device, or any other suitable technology for receiving user input and/or displaying data to a user. Through user interface 140, for example, a user may select a cooking temperature or output level, a cycle type (e.g., bake, broil, convection bake, convection roast, etc.), a cycle duration, a delay duration, or any other settings that may be appropriate for a desired oven cooking cycle. In addition, one or more temperature sensors 142 may be disposed in each oven cavity to sense current temperature in the oven cavity.
Each gas burner 110, 112, 114, 116 also includes a respective igniter 144, 146, 148, 150 and a respective ignition sensor 152, 154, 156, 168. Each igniter 144, 146, 148, 150 may be a direct igniter such as a spark igniter in some embodiments, while in other embodiments, a proven igniter such as a hot surface igniter may be used, whereby each igniter remains active the entire time gas is flowing. Each ignition sensor 152, 154, 156, 158 may be implemented using a flame detector or another suitable technology for sensing ignition of a gas burner, or may be omitted in some embodiments. In addition, while controller 138 is illustrated as having separate control outputs routed to the individual igniters 144, 146, 148, 150 to support individual control thereof, in other embodiments, and as illustrated by dashed line 160, the igniters 144, 146, 148, 150 may be controlled by the same control output, e.g., generated by controller 138 or a separate ignition module. In addition, it will be appreciated that in some embodiments, an igniter and an ignition sensor may be integrated into the same component that performs both functions.
First, in block 222, the shared gas valve is activated if necessary (e.g., if no other gas burners are currently active) along with the dedicated valve(s) for all intended gas burners (thereby establishing gas flow to each intended gas burner). In addition, the igniters for all gas burners (both intended and unintended) are activated. It will be appreciated that these operations may occur concurrently in some embodiments, while in other embodiments, different sequences may be used, e.g., to change the order in which the dedicated gas valve(s), shared gas valve and igniter(s) are activated (for example, to start the igniters shortly before establishing gas flow to the gas burner(s).
Block 224 next enters a loop to wait for the intended gas burner(s) to ignite, and polls all of the ignition sensors for the intended gas burners to attempt to confirm that all of the intended gas burners are ignited. If not, control passes to block 226 to determine if a time out has occurred, i.e., based upon a predetermined timer duration from the beginning of the activation effort. If a time out has occurred, then successful ignition has not occurred within the predetermined timer duration, so block 226 passes control to block 228 to deactivate all gas valves and igniters. In the alternative, if, for example, another cooking cycle is in progress in another oven, only a subset of the dedicated gas valves may be deactivated in block 228, thereby allowing the other cooking cycle to continue. Also, at this time, activation may be re-attempted one or more times in some embodiments, with a delay between activation attempts optionally used in some embodiments to allow for uncombusted gas in the oven cavity to disperse.
Further, in addition to or in lieu of performing additional attempts, an error may be signaled in block 228, e.g., by generating a user notification such as an audible alert, a message on a display, a message on a mobile device, etc. In addition, in some embodiments the user notification may include an identification of any gas burners involved in the activation attempt, e.g., “ignition failure detected for oven 1 broil burner, retrying.”
Returning to block 224, if successful ignition has been confirmed for all intended gas burners, control passes to block 230 to poll the ignition sensors for all other gas burners to determine if a flame has been sensed at any of these unintended gas burners. Ignition or activation of an unintended gas burner could potentially occur, for example, if the control wires for the dedicated gas valve for the unintended gas burner were miswired or shorted to those of another gas valve, or if the dedicated gas valve for the unintended gas burner was stuck in an open state. Thus, if any unintended gas burner is found to be activated, block 230 passes control to block 232 to deactivate all gas valves (or at least the shared gas valve) and igniters and signal an error. In some instances, the deactivation may be limited to the gas burners in the affected oven cavity, while in other instances, it may be desirable to effectively disable all gas burners until the cooking appliance can be serviced. The signaled error may include, for example, a user notification such as an audible alert, a message on a display, a message on a mobile device, a message to a service organization, etc. In addition, in some embodiments the user notification may include an identification of the unintended gas burner that was activated, e.g., “unexpected ignition detected for oven 1 broil burner, oven has been disabled”.
Returning to block 230, if no activated unintended gas burners were detected, control passes to block 234 to deactivate the igniters, whereby all intended gas burners have been successfully activated. Sequence 220 is then complete.
Numerous variations and modifications to the multi-burner gas oven control system illustrated in
The use of a single cooking element to maintain a temperature setpoint in an oven can result in temperature variations in the oven and uneven cooking of food. While bake cycles are the most common type of cooking cycles that utilize temperature setpoints, it will be appreciated that a number of cooking appliances support additional types of similar cycles, such as roast, convection bake, convection roast, warm, and proof, among others.
In this regard, maintaining a temperature setpoint generally involves the temporary activation of the cooking element from time to time in order to keep the temperature in the oven substantially close to the temperature setpoint, after a preheat phase in which the oven has been initially heated to the temperature setpoint. In many ovens, maintaining a temperature setpoint involves heating the oven with the cooking element until the temperature setpoint has been reached, and then deactivating the cooking element and allowing the temperature in the oven to drop slowly over time until the temperature drops a predetermined amount from the temperature setpoint, generally established either in absolute (e.g., 10 degrees) or relative (e.g., 5%) terms. Once the temperature has dropped this predetermined amount, the heating element is again activated until the oven heats back up to the temperature setpoint. This process is generally repeated throughout the cooking cycle, until either the user shuts off the oven or a timer has determined that the cooking cycle is complete. For the purposes of this disclosure therefore maintaining a temperature setpoint may be considered to include one or more operations, referred to herein as temperature reestablishment operations, that seek to reestablish the temperature setpoint after the temperature in the oven has dropped sufficiently below the temperature setpoint, e.g., a reactivation temperature that is determined either based upon an absolute or relative decrease from the temperature setpoint.
It has been found, for example, that during a bake cycle, the use of the bake cooking element alone can result in a higher temperature in a lower portion of an oven cavity than in an upper portion of the upper cavity, causing faster cooking and/or browning of the bottom of food being cooked. By using multiple cooking elements, e.g., both bake and broil cooking elements, a more even temperature distribution can generally be obtained; however, in gas ovens, design limitations often make the use of multiple gas burners impractical. Air flow and other concerns generally preclude the simultaneous use of bake and broil gas burners in many gas ovens. Furthermore, the conventional hot surface igniters that are generally used in many gas ovens often take a substantial amount of time to active or ignite a gas burner, e.g., 60 seconds or more, which often makes switching between multiple gas burners impractical for maintaining a temperature setpoint due to the relatively short period of time that heating is required in order to reestablish the temperature setpoint after the temperature has dropped to the reactivation temperature.
In some embodiments consistent with the invention, however, spark igniters may be used in lieu of hot surface igniters to substantially reduce the time required to re-ignite a gas burner from 60+ seconds to generally less than 5 seconds, and thereby enable multiple gas burners to be utilized in temperature reestablishment operations, and in some instances by activating each gas burner multiple times and/or in multiple iterations (i.e., where each iteration includes the activation of one or more gas burners, such that, within a particular temperature reestablishment operation, at least one gas burner is activated multiple times). By doing so, improved baking performance and evenness of food browning can more generally be achieved.
As illustrated by sequence of operations 240 of
Sequence 240 may be executed, for example, by controller 138 of
Activation of the burner in block 246 may include, for example, activating the shared and dedicated valves and spark igniter for the burner, as discussed above in connection with
Block 246 then returns control to block 242 to process the next burner involved in the temperature reestablishment operation, and once all involved burners have been activated, the iteration is complete and block 242 initiates a next iteration. Thus, one or more iterations of the loop of blocks 242-246 are performed until block 244 determines that the temperature setpoint has been reached. At this point, block 244 passes control to block 248 to deactivate all burners, and the temperature reestablishment operation is complete.
It will be appreciated that the duration of each gas burner's activation may be static over multiple iterations, or may be varied in different iterations. Where a specific activation duration is used, for example, the duration may be a static value, or may be determined dynamically, e.g., at the initiation of a temperature reestablishment operation or during each iteration. The activation duration may also be different for each gas burner. In one embodiment, for example, a bake gas burner may be activated for 15 seconds and a broil gas burner may be activated for 10 seconds in each iteration.
Moreover, when a predetermined temperature is used to control the duration of activation, the predetermined temperature may be determined in different manners, e.g., based on static values, dynamically determined at the initiation of a temperature reestablishment operation, or dynamically determined during each iteration. In one embodiment, for example, predetermined temperatures may be determined during each iteration based upon the difference between the current sensed temperature and the temperature setpoint (e.g., where the current temperature is 380° F. (degrees Fahrenheit) and the temperature setpoint is 400° F., perform one iteration activating the bake gas burner until the current temperature is 385° F. and activating the broil gas burner until the current temperature is 390° F., and then performing a second iteration activating the bake gas burner until the current temperature is 395° F. and activating the broil gas burner until the current temperature is 400° F.).
It will also be appreciated that some gas burners may be temperature-based, while others may be duration-based, and which gas burners are temperature-based and which are duration-based may vary from iteration to iteration. Additional variations may occur between different iterations, e.g., such that during an iteration, one or more of an activation sequence (i.e., the order in which burners are activated), an actuation overlap (i.e., a duration in which two or more burners are concurrently activated), a predetermined activation duration of one or more gas burners, a predetermined temperature at which to deactivate one or more gas burners, etc. may be varied relative to an earlier iteration.
Thus, in block 252, the first gas burner (e.g., the bake gas burner) is activated for its predetermined activation duration, and with the second gas burner (e.g., the broil gas burner) deactivated. After this activation duration has passed, the first gas burner is deactivated, and control then passes to block 254, where the current temperature is checked (e.g., with an oven temperature sensor) to determine if the temperature setpoint has been reached. If not, control passes to block 256, where the second gas burner (e.g., the broil gas burner) is activated for its predetermined activation duration, and with the first gas burner (e.g., the bake gas burner) deactivated. After this activation duration has passed, the second gas burner is deactivated, and control then passes to block 258, where the current temperature is again checked (e.g., with an oven temperature sensor) to determine if the temperature setpoint has been reached. If not, the current iteration is complete, and control passes to block 252 to initiate a next iteration to sequentially activate the first and second gas burners.
If the current temperature is determined to reach the temperature setpoint in either block 254 or block 258, control passes to block 260 deactivate both gas burners, and the temperature reestablishment operation is complete.
As noted above, activation durations of each burner may be based on predetermined durations and/or predetermined temperatures being reached, and moreover, activation durations of burners may vary from iteration to iteration, and even the sequence or number of burners involved may vary from iteration to iteration.
It will be appreciated that various modifications may be made to the embodiments discussed herein, and that a number of the concepts disclosed herein may be used in combination with one another or may be used separately. Therefore, the invention lies in the claims hereinafter appended.
