Patent Application
20230417419
The present embodiments relate to a cooktop surface, with particular embodiments shown for a cooktop surface of a cooking appliance.
Typical cooktop surfaces may get soiled over time and can be difficult to clean. For example, cooking/food materials (e.g. burnt food or fluid) on the cooktop surfaces may not be able to be cleaned/removed in order to return the cooktop surface back to its satisfactory appearance. Thus, there is a need for a cleanable cooktop surface and/or method of cleaning the cooktop surface for the cooking appliance.
In some embodiments of the invention, for example, a cooking appliance may include a housing including an oven cavity and one or more electric burners. In various embodiments, the appliance may include one or more glass members positionable between a first configuration wherein the one or more glass members may be disposed over the one or more electric burners and a second configuration wherein the one or more glass members are disposed within the oven cavity. In some embodiments, the appliance may include a temperature sensor configured to sense an air temperature within the oven cavity. In various embodiments, the appliance may include one or more electric cooking elements configured to generate heat within the oven cavity. In various embodiments, the appliance may include a controller in communication with the temperature sensor and configured to control the one or more electric cooking elements to perform a pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle within the oven cavity when the one or more glass members are disposed within the oven cavity in the second configuration.
In addition, in some embodiments, the appliance may include one or more stands, wherein the one or more stands position the one or more glass members in the second configuration within the oven cavity when performing the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle. In various embodiments, the one or more glass members may be at least a portion of a cooktop in the first configuration. In some embodiments, the appliance may include a cooktop disposed over the one or more electric burners, wherein the one or more glass members may be a cover disposed over the cooktop. In various embodiments, the controller may be configured to perform the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle by regulating the one or more electric cooking elements to maintain the temperature within the oven cavity proximate a pyrolytic glass member-clean temperature setpoint. In some embodiments, the controller may be configured to control the one or more electric cooking elements to perform an oven self-clean cycle within the oven cavity. In various embodiments, the appliance may include one or more oven racks disposed within the oven cavity, wherein the one or more oven racks are removed from the over cavity when the one or more glass members are in the second configuration. In some embodiments, the one or more glass members may be a ceramic glass. In various embodiments, the one or more glass members may have one or more graphics.
In some embodiments, a cooking appliance may include a housing including an oven cavity and one or more electric burners. In various embodiments, the appliance may include one or more glass members positionable between a first configuration wherein the one or more glass members are disposed over the one or more electric burners and a second configuration wherein the one or more glass members are disposed within the oven cavity. In some embodiments, the appliance may include one or more electric cooking elements configured to generate heat within the oven cavity to clean the one or more glass members when in the second configuration.
In addition, in some embodiments, the appliance may include a controller configured to control the one or more electric cooking elements to perform a pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle within the oven cavity when the one or more glass members are disposed within the oven cavity in the second configuration. In various embodiments, the appliance may include one or more stands spacing the one or more glass members from one or more cavity walls when in the second configuration. In some embodiments, the one or more glass members may be at least one of one or more covers and/or at least a portion of a cooktop. In various embodiments, the appliance may include a self-clean cycle, wherein the self-clean cycle may be different from the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle. In some embodiments, the appliance may not include a self-clean cycle. In various embodiments, the one or more glass members may be in direct contact with one or more cavity walls. In some embodiments, the one or more glass members may be positioned horizontally on a bottom wall of the one or more cavity walls.
In some embodiments, a method of pyrolytic cleaning one or more glass members disposed over one or more electric burners may include providing one or more glass members in a first configuration disposed over one or more electric burners. In various embodiments, the method may include positioning the one or more glass members in a second configuration in an oven cavity. In some embodiments, the method may include sensing a temperature within the oven cavity of a cooking appliance. In various embodiments, the method may include a controller in communication with a temperature sensor, performing a pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle within the oven cavity when the one or more glass members are disposed within the oven cavity in the second configuration by regulating one or more cooking elements that generate heat within the oven cavity to maintain the temperature within the oven cavity proximate a pyrolytic glass member-clean temperature setpoint.
In addition, in some embodiments, the method may include positioning the one or more glass members on one or more stands within the oven cavity in the second configuration. In various embodiments, the method may include washing the one or more glass members at least one of before and/or after performing the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle. In some embodiments, the one or more glass members may be one or more covers disposed on at least a portion of a cooktop. In various embodiments, the one or more glass members may be at least a portion of a cooktop. In some embodiments, the method may include uniformly heating the one or more glass members when performing the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle. In various embodiments, the method may include incinerating cooking material on the one or more glass members when performing the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle. In various embodiments, the method may include removing one or more oven racks from the oven cavity before positioning the one or more glass members in a second configuration in the oven cavity.
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 25 for controlling oven 18, glass member clean-cycle, and/or burners 16, and a display 26 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 heating elements in some embodiments, while in the case of a stovetop, one or more cooking elements therein may be gas, electric, or inductive heating 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), 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. In the one embodiment shown, the cooktop 14 includes one or more radiant burners (e.g. electric) adjacent thereto and the cooking cavity 20 includes one or more cooking elements 17 such as, but is not limited to, radiant elements (e.g. electric).
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.
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
Turning to the Figures, the cooking appliance may include one or more glass members 30 that may be pyrolytically cleaned within the cooking cavity 20. The one or more glass members 30 may include or define a cooktop surface 31 for placement/heating of the cooking utensil(s) (e.g. pots, pans, etc.). When the one or more glass members 30 become dirty/soiled, the user may position the one or more glass members 30 within the cooking cavity 20 and cleaned by pyrolytic heating of the glass member(s) and materials thereon. The one or more glass members 30, with the cooktop surface(s) 31, may by one or more covers 90 disposed over at least a portion of the cooktop 14 or over the one or more burners 16 (e.g. in a first configuration) in some implementations as shown in
In some implementations, the one or more glass members 30 (e.g. one or more portions of the cover and/or cooktop) may be positionable between two or more configurations relative to the cooking appliance. The one or more glass members 30 may be positioned between at least a first configuration and a second configuration as shown in the one embodiment. As shown in
In some implementations, the cooking appliance or glass member(s) may include one or more stands 80. The stands 80 may position one or more glass members 30 (e.g. one or more portions of a cover and/or cooktop) within the cooking cavity 20 when the one or more glass members are in the second configuration and/or performing the pyrolytic glass member-cleaning cycle. In the one embodiment shown in
Now turning to
At the start of the cycle (block 102), the oven door 22 is locked either automatically or manually, and one or more of the cooking elements 17 for the oven are activated (block 104), typically at maximum output power if a variable output power is supported. The one or more cooking elements 17 are regulated to maintain the temperature within the oven cavity proximate at least one glass member-clean temperature setpoint. The air temperature within the oven cavity 20 is then monitored using a temperature sensor (block 106) until the target pyrolytic glass member-clean temperature setpoint is reached. Once the temperature setpoint is reached, control then passes to block 108 to start a timer and initiate a clean phase of the cycle, and blocks 110 and 112 then monitor the air temperature to maintain the temperature within the oven cavity proximate the target pyrolytic glass member-clean temperature setpoint. Thus, for example, if the temperature rises above the glass member-clean temperature setpoint (which may or may not include an offset or threshold to minimize cycling), block 110 passes control to block 114 to deactivate the cooking elements. Likewise, if the temperature falls below the glass member-clean temperature setpoint (which may or may not include an offset or threshold to minimize cycling), block 112 passes control to block 116 to deactivate the cooking elements. As such, the controller maintains the temperature within the oven cavity within a narrow range around the target glass member-clean temperature setpoint.
Block 118 then periodically checks if the self-clean timer has reached a predetermined duration for the clean phase (e.g., generally in the range of about 2 to about 2.5 hours and/or less than an oven self-clean cycle), and if not, returns control to block 110 to continue to regulate or control the cooking elements to maintain the oven cavity temperature proximate the target glass member-clean temperature setpoint. If the duration has been reached, however, block 118 passes control to block 120 to initiate a cooling phase by deactivating the cooking elements and waiting for sufficient cooling to occur (e.g., after a predetermined duration or after the oven cavity temperature falls below a predetermined threshold). The oven door is then unlocked (block 122), and the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle is complete.
In some implementations, the cooking appliance may include an oven self-clean cycle that may be selected by the user to clean the oven cooking cavity. The self-clean cycle may be included with an appliance, alone or in combination with a pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle. In some implementations, the oven self-cleaning cycle may be used to clean the one or more glass members, instead of a glass member-clean cycle. The oven-self clean cycle, if used, may be different than the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle in duration and/or temperature of the cooking cavity. For example, the oven-self clean cycle may require a longer duration at substantially the same temperature of the glass member-clean cycle. Performing the self-clean cycle may clean both the oven cavity walls and the one or more glass members if positioned in the second configuration. Alternatively, when the glass member-self clean cycle is performed, the oven cavity walls may not be cleaned or food material incinerated (e.g. fully, as desired) on the cavity walls although the material on the glass members may be incinerated. One embodiment of a self-clean cycle may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 11,009,238 of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety.
In use, the user may determine when the cooktop surfaces of one or more glass members 30 (e.g. one or more covers 90 and/or cooktop 14) in the first configuration are dirty and/or desires to clean (e.g. pyrolytically) the one or more glass members. The user may open the door 22 to the cooking cavity 20 and remove the oven racks in some embodiments. The one or more stands 80, if used, may be positioned within the cooking cavity 20 (e.g. bottom wall). In some embodiments, excess food materials may be washed off the one or more glass materials 30 before performing the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle. The user removes the one or more glass members 30 (e.g. cover(s) and/or cooktop(s)) from the first configuration and inserts/positions into the opened cooking cavity to the second configuration and onto the one or more stands, if used. When in the second configuration, the user may close the door to the cooking cavity 20. The oven door may be locked (e.g. manually or automatically). The user may initiate the pyrolytic glass member-clean cycle with a user input to the controls/user interface. Once a temperature setpoint is reached, a timer or timeframe at a predetermined temperature may be completed. The surfaces of or the body of the one or more glass members 30 may be uniformly heated during the glass-member clean cycle. When performing the glass member-clean cycle the food/cooking materials thereon may be incinerated. The oven door is unlocked (e.g. automatically or manually). The oven door may unlock, when the temperature of the cooking cavity falls or is sensed below a predetermined threshold. The user may return/remove the one or more glass members (e.g. one or more portions of the cover and/or cooktop) from the second configuration within the cooking cavity back to the first configuration disposed over the cooktop and/or one or more burners, or another location (e.g. storage). For example, once the one or more glass members has reached a temperature to handle. In some embodiments, the one or more glass members may be washed after the glass member-clean cycle. For example, to wash off or remove incinerated food/cooking material on the one or more cooktop surfaces of the glass member(s).
In some implementations, the cooking appliance 10 may not include an oven self-cleaning cycle and/or reach oven temperatures above about 500 degrees Fahrenheit to about 600 degrees Fahrenheit and still be within the scope of the invention to clean one or more glass members 30 (e.g. one or more portions of the cover and/or cooktop). As shown in the one embodiment in
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.
