Patent Grant
8627524
The present invention refers to an improved clothes washing machine having a wash tub, inside of which there is a rotating clothes-holding drum having a substantially horizontal rotation shaft. Specifically, the washing machine is able to recirculate the wash liquor and is adapted to optimize the general performance capabilities thereof, i.e. a washing program enables the best possible results to be achieved under minimal usage data of the various process factors employed, water, washing products and electric power, along with the time needed to complete the washing program selected.
Clothes washing machines are generally known in the art to operate by letting into the washing tub a first amount of water together with the clothes to be washed and the required washing products, and then handling and processing the clothes until they are thoroughly clean. At the end of the washing program, the liquor used in the process is let off outside by means of a pump via an appropriate outlet pipe.
Equally well known in the art is the fact that all parameters of the washing process, i.e. the washing time, the number of rinses, the temperature, and the mechanical action, the chemical action of the washing products and aids are closely correlated with each other and markedly affected by what may be considered as being the determining factor the amount of clothes to be washed.
As a matter of fact, while it is fully apparent that the amount of clothes to be washed also determines the amount of water to be used, it has to be duly considered that the amount of water used in the process determines the amount of energy that is required to heat up that amount of water to a pre-established temperature. Further, the amount of washing product added can be validly brought into a mutual relation with the amount of water and a number of other factors. Finally, it should be noted that even the washing time (the duration of the washing process) is directly affected by the amount of water used and, accordingly, the washload (the amount of clothes) because it is generally known that the presence of just a modest washload inside a rotating drum of a clothes washing machine implies that such a washload is submitted to a mechanical action that is by far stronger than the one acting—with a less marked effect, of course—on a washload that fills up the entire drum.
It can therefore be stated that a reasonably exact knowledge of the amount of clothes loaded into the drum of the washing machine to be washed is practically a pre-condition to be known to set a washing program that causes the washing machine to operate in such a manner as to ensure optimum washing results under minimization of the machine operating requirements in terms of water, washing product and energy usage, as well as time needed to complete the washing process.
As a result, a sound determination of this factor becomes a basic step towards the ability for any other aspect of the washing process to be further improved.
A number of patent publications are known, which use different approaches to tackle the problem of determining the amount and type of the washload, mainly using a measurement of the amount of water totally absorbed by said washload.
Known from GB 2 076 648 (Miele & Cie.) is a front-loading clothes washing machine with a drum rotating about a horizontal axis and provided with such arrangements and operating provisions that, by measuring in a preliminary phase the amount of water that is on the whole absorbed by the washload, enable it to trace back—through proper processing and on the basis of previously measured experimental data—to an information correlating with the kind of washload in the drum.
Such method, however, has the following major drawbacks that put serious limitations to the practical effectiveness thereof:
1. A first drawback is that the measurement of the amount of water absorbed by the washload has, in all cases, to be carried out by causing the drum to become partially submerged in the underlying water bath contained in the washing tub; this condition is obviously required in order to let the clothes loaded in the drum interact with said water and cause the water itself to be absorbed by the washload held in the drum. However, this determines a water usage that is by far greater than the one actually needed, since use is made here of not only an amount of water such as needed to fully soak the washload, but also the amount of water that is needed to fill the bottom portion of the washing tub up to a level enabling the surface of the water in the tub to reach up to an adequate height above the bottom edge of the drum.
2. A second such drawback lies in the method being used; the amount of washload is not actually measured, but rather just processed out through a correlation with the amount of water absorbed by a plurality of washloads that differ from each other as far as both the amount of clothes involved and the kind and properties of the clothes in said washloads are concerned, as determined experimentally in a set of exhaustive test runs carried out beforehand. It can be readily appreciated that such correlation is a source of approximations, and related inaccuracies, not only as far as the methods used for the experiments, the calculations, and extrapolations carried out are concerned, but also due to the fact that, in any case, the calculated value does not take into account the great variability in the aptitude of the various types of fabrics in the washloads to absorb water. As a result, what is actually calculated is in all cases a conventional and not an actually measured value.
3. A third such drawback, owing to water having to be successively filled in the tub a number of times in order to restore the proper level such that each refill step is separated from the subsequent one by respective periods of rotation of the drum, is the proposed method turns out to be quite time consuming.
Known from the disclosure in GB 2 051 413 (Licentia) is a clothes washing machine that is substantially similar to the above described, and is practically adapted to control the amount of detergent to be dispensed into the wash tub based on the amount of water that is let into the same tub. Even in this case, it is not the amount of clothes introduced in the drum for washing that is measured. Rather, such information is worked out by a data processing method that is fully equivalent to the one described above, having the same drawbacks.
Known from the disclosure in EP 1 350 881 A1 is a method for measuring the washload in a front-loading clothes washing machine adapted to: determine the amount of water absorbed by the washload by subtracting, from the total amount of water let into the washing tub, the so-called free amount of water, i.e. the amount that is present in the tub, measured by a pressure switch or level probe; estimate the specific water absorption of the washload; calculate an equivalent (conventional) washload, i.e. load of clothes; and based on the result of this calculation, select and carry out a corresponding washing program.
Furthermore, all of the above processing steps are carried out on the basis of an estimation of the expected final values, which is obtained by detecting and evaluating the dynamic behavior obtained by calculating their derivatives versus time.
However, even this method has a number of practical limitations, such as the following: the equation relating the absorbed amount of water with the amount of water detected by the pressure switch or probe (free water) is admittedly (cf. the above-cited patent at page 2, lines 30 et seq.) involving a number of approximations owing to the interaction between absorbed water and free water; and further, a second approximation derives from an interpolation, using experimental data, based on the specific absorption, i.e. the ratio:
However, such parameter does not represent any constant data for each actual washload, but is rather a value that varies in accordance with the total amount of water filled in the washing tub (cf. above mentioned patent, page 3, lines 9 et seq., and in particular lines 14 and 15).
It may therefore be readily appreciated that, in the actual practice, the approximations introduced in this way, along with the generally acknowledged method-related limitations, altogether bring about an inaccuracy of such an extent as to impair a real effectiveness of the invention disclosed therein.
Briefly, the invention disclosed in the above-cited patent provides for somehow measuring a so-called “equivalent load” (cf. claim 1), but not the actual washload introduced in the machine.
In addition, even in this case the method suffers a drawback in that, owing to the need for the clothes to be soaked from the water bath in the washing tub, the tub has to be filled up to a level which is adequately higher than the lower limit or edge of the drum inside the tub, and this most obviously implies a fully appreciable water usage involving in turn a respective, but useless energy usage, which would preferably be avoided if water were filled into the tub only in such amount as strictly required to just soak the washload, and no more.
Finally, there is still a further drawback, and which is shared by all of the afore considered concepts. In fact, when the washing tub is filled, even partially, with water to such a level as to rise above the lower edge of the drum, the rotation of the same drum brings about an instability condition and a difference in the level being actually perceived, resulting in a instability in the pressure on the pressure or level control switch and an error in the signal delivered by the latter.
From US 2001/0052249A1 a washing machine is known which is able to avoid the undesirable condition found during a spray pretreatment portion of the wash cycle called “suds lock”. When this condition occurs, contact of the fluid with the spinning basket acts to further increase the amount of suds which thus raises the height of the sudsy fluid toward the basket. The eventual result of this unstable process is that suds build up beyond the bottom of the basket and climb between the sides of the basket and tub. This large amount of suds acting between the spinning basket and the fixed tub produces a significant drag force on the basket. This drug force is large enough to cause the clutch to slip and, thus causing the basket to slow down considerably. This slipping of the clutch due to excessive suds between the spinning basket and the tub is called “suds lock”.
Moreover, the machine is able to determine the size of the load, regardless of the type of fabric materials contained in the load. However, the disclosure only applies to, washing machines provided with a basket rotating only on vertical axis; and not on an horizontal axis, which is customary in Europe.
While the above disclosure solves avoiding “suds] lock” during a pretreatment step, or stain care cycle, and it would therefore be desirable to provide a washing method in a front-loading clothes washing machine provided with an arrangement to circulate the washing liquor, which is adapted to automatically measure the washload introduced in the drum on the basis of information to be entered by the user and concerning the type and, therefore, the properties of the clothes in the washload, as well as on the basis of an information on the amount of water absorbed by such washload under pre-established conditions, by processing such data and by performing interpolations with previously determined experimental data duly stored in the clothes washing machine itself.
In addition, the clothes washing machine of the present invention shall be easily manufactured using existing, readily available techniques; it shall further be competitively simple in its construction and convenient to use. In particular, it shall be capable of being implemented with only minor modifications to current washing machine designs. Moreover, the features added in accordance with the present invention shall by no means affect the reliability level of the washing machine itself.
According to the present invention, these aims as set forth above are reached in a measurement method to be carried out in a kind of clothes washing machine that is provided with such operating and control means as described below by way of non-limiting example with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
The methodological approach, which the present invention is substantially based upon, is disclosed below.
In a clothes washing machine having a drum rotating about a substantially horizontal axis, the amount of water that is absorbed by a single washload at any particular instant is a function of a number of factors, among which the most important ones are:
Conversely, it can also be stated that each one of the above-mentioned factors can be singled out individually if it is isolated from the other ones or, in other words, if a sufficient number of experiments are conducted in which said other factors are appropriately varied, such as for instance by using such statistical techniques as the fractional factorial lab tests. The results of such tests and the related factors are correlated with the respective value assumed by the factor whose behaviour is to be identified, so that the value of the factor under examination, i.e. being considered, can be extrapolated from each single combination of such factors using well-known and largely accepted statistical techniques.
The above preamble has been set forth for the sole purpose of explaining, in a simple and straightforward manner, that if the weight of a load of clothes to be washed is to be desirably determined, all it takes to do this is to perform a sequence of appropriately designed experiments, in which the values of a test load, the values of the level of the water present in the wash tub, etc., are varied in a known manner and methodically associated to the resulting amounts of water absorbed by those varying loads, so that with easily done interpolations it is possible, by measuring a certain amount of absorbed water and knowing the values assumed by the other factors, to readily trace back to the value of the washload under examination.
Each of the above-defined factors will be examined below:
Such circumstance has a twofold advantage: first, the water usage is drastically reduced, owing to reasons that are well-known to and, in any case, most readily understood by all those skilled in the art, so that they shall not be explained here any further. Second, because the tub is not filled with water, but simply collects from the bottom the water that falls thereonto from the drum that is sprayed by said jet throwing water thereinto, this water is conveyed into the sleeve 7, this shall be explained in greater detail further on. In practice, the tub operates with just a very small amount of water in it, wherein the level of this water lies in any case below the lower edge of the drum. Sometimes, and solely for reasons of safety, such level of the water may be allowed to lie above the level at which the heating elements are situated.
In practice, this means that the variable relating to the water level in the drum is eliminated, and reduces the number of the factors that need to be considered; resulting in an improved correlation between the amount of absorbed water and the amount of clothes loaded in the drum.
At this point, it should be strongly noted that in order to carry out all these measurements and comparisons, it is necessary for standard and constant conditions to be defined, under which said measurements are to be made.
Because the amount of water absorbed by the clothes in a washload depends also on the length of time during which the water is allowed to be in contact with said clothes, the measurements are assumed to be carried out in a precisely defined condition, i.e. when the water absorption reaches a dynamic balance or steady-state condition, meaing that the amount of water being absorbed is equal to the amount of water being released by the fibers under examination in the same time length.
This occurrence can be verified by means of a simple procedure; an initial amount of water is poured onto the washload, followed by subsequent amounts intended to restore said initial water filling, while repeatedly measuring the amount of water being released from the washload, and falling onto the bottom of the tub, so as to check it for stabilizing at a substantially constant value. Because it is this water that the flow of circulated water being returned to the clothes in the drum is taken in a continuous manner, it can be readily appreciated that said condition of dynamical balance occurs when the amount of water being returned into the drum is found to be equal to the amount of water that falls therefrom, i.e. when the level on the bottom portion of the tub becomes substantially constant.
With reference to
Below the tub there is provided a drain manifold 4 connected with the outlet pipe 6 on one side and the sleeve 7 on the opposite intake side, the other end of said sleeve 7 being in turn connected with an opening 8 provided in the bottom of said tub.
In an appropriate position along said sleeve 7 there is further provided a tap for a pressure switch 9 to be connected to.
Because the present invention applies to a clothes washing machine provided with a feature for re-circulating the washing liquor into the drum, there is suitably provided a so-called re-circulation manifold 10 connected via a conduit 11 to known means 13, such as an appropriate nozzle, adapted to direct a jet of water into said drum. Although such nozzle 13 is illustrated as being seemingly arranged inside the drum, other solutions are however possible, in which said means 13 is for example situated on the upper side of the loading door gasket and the water jet issuing therefrom enters the drum and hits the clothes directly, without passing first through the perforations in the walls of the same drum.
Also, said re-circulation manifold 10 is provided with an appropriate pump 14 adapted to take in the liquor from the drain manifold and pump it towards said means 13, from which the liquor is then sprayed into the drum.
On the conduit that carries the water from the water supply line, or on said conduit 13A, there is fitted a device 15, which measures the flow rate and, therefore, the amount of water that is let into the machine on the whole; such device can for instance be a flowmeter of any standard type, or the like, which is associated to processing means adapted to integrate the signal generated by it with the time.
Furthermore, said clothes washing machine is provided with control means 20, connected to said flowmeter and the other operating or functional parts of the machine, wherein said control means are also adapted to receive the start command entered by the user. In addition, said control means are adapted to also receive a command that is representative of the various types and kinds of fabrics that may be included in a washload.
According to the present invention, said clothes washing machine automatically carries out a determination of the weight of the washload introduced in the drum by following the procedure that is explained below, i.e. the procedure that is illustrated schematically in the block diagram of
At 201, prior to starting a washing cycle, the washing machine takes in a given amount of water for the same to reach up to a pre-set, generally low level inside the wash tub, as measured by the pressure switch or similar level probe 9; as soon as this level is reached, the electromagnetic valve 3 is closed automatically.
As an alternative option, instead of the signal delivered by said pressure switch or level probe 9, the signal delivered by the flowmeter 15 indicating the instant flow rate of the water filled into the machine can be used, e.g. suitably integrated with time.
At the same time as this action is being carried out, the time starts to be measured by means of a timer included in said control means.
At 202, the water re-circulating pump 14 is started and allowed to operate throughout the duration of the next step of the procedure.
At 203, drum starts to operate in a continuous manner by performing alternate rotating cycles at low speed in both directions of rotation, so that the clothes are allowed to keep tumbling on the bottom of the drum, where it is reached by the jet of water issuing from the nozzle 13.
The clothes in the washload start to absorb the water, which they are being sprayed with, and to release part of such water through the drum and onto the bottom of the wash tub, from which said water is taken in and conveyed again into the drum by the re-circulation manifold 10.
The level control pressure switch detects the height of the water level on the bottom of the wash tub and sends the related information—preferably in a continuous manner—to said control means 20.
At 206, the time elapsed from the beginning of the procedure keeps being measured; this function is of a basic importance, since it determines, jointly with other factors that shall be better explained further on in this description, the type and the sequence of the events to come.
At 207, a sub-routine is started, the actions of which are indicated in the logic blocks of
At 208, a sub-routine is performed, which controls said electromagnetic valve into opening and closing based solely on the time elapsed from the last closure of said electromagnetic valve.
In
The above sub-routine causes said electromagnetic valve to go through a sequence of opening and closing cycles, in which each opening of the valve is triggered upon the water being detected to have reached a pre-determined level, which will have been previously defined solely on the basis of the time elapsed from the end of the previous water refilling step to the beginning of the current water refilling step.
If this time is found to be short, this will mean that the water has been absorbed by the clothes at a quite high rate, i.e. very quickly, while being released by the same clothes in a just small amount, so that it can be assumed that the clothes in the washload were dry or just slightly wet and, therefore, it is necessary for an additional, rather significant amount of water to be filled in so as to cause a consistently higher level to be reached in the tub. If such time is otherwise detected to be long, this on the contrary will mean that just a small amount of additional water is actually needed to reach a steady-state, i.e. balance condition in the water absorption by the clothes, which is actually the targeted condition, so that just a quite smaller amount of water is further added, which causes an obviously lower level to be reached in the tub.
Of course, such sequence of: opening of the electromagnetic valve, calculation of the time elapsed from the end of the last water refilling, consequent automatic determination of the new level to be reached, detection of the new level being reached in the tub, and consequent automatic closing of the electromagnetic valve, is part of a pre-programmed routine included in said control means 20, in which both the correlation of the measured time data with each other and the determination of the new level to be reached, and possibly even the highest allowable number of successive water refillings, can be freely selected in accordance with the desired results, as duly and adequately verified experimentally.
At 209, a condition is further determined, which conventionally defines the state in which a dynamic balance or steady-state condition is reached in the water absorption by the clothes; when this condition is detected as being reached, the procedure for filling additional amounts of water in the tub is stopped.
This condition occurs when the amount of water sprayed onto and absorbed by the clothes in the drum equals the amount of water that is released by the same clothes and collects on the bottom of the tub to be further conveyed into said sleeve 7. Under these conditions, wherein the water re-circulating circuit is operating continuously, said dynamic water absorption balance state is detected as being reached when the level of the water on the bottom of the tub, or in the sleeve 7, becomes substantially constant.
This condition may be measured in various manners with respective degrees of accuracy.
A preferred manner is based on determining two successive, although not necessarily adjoining time intervals and measuring the level of the water within said intervals either continuously or at predefined times.
The average of the levels measured in the respective ones of said two time intervals is then calculated and the two resulting average values are compared with each other; these actions are synthetically illustrated in the blocks that are jointly circled by the dashed line indicated at 209 in
At 210, if the difference between said two average values is found to be smaller than a certain pre-defined value, the dynamic balance condition of the water level is assumed as having been reached.
It is appreciated that a number of other methods are available for measuring said condition of dynamic balance. These shall however not be explained here any further, because it is within the normal ability of those skilled in the art to identify them in accordance with the particular constraints, primarily as far as the measurement time and the desired accuracy are concerned.
A second method that can be used to ascertain the existence of a dynamic balance state consists in continuously checking the duration of the last water refilling step for it to be shorter than a pre-set value.
A third method may for example further consist of a suitable OR-type or AND-type combination of the two dynamic balance conditions found and measured according to the above-described methods.
It will be readily appreciated that such condition is a purely conventional condition, and a convenience-dictated one, and the processing and control program that is passed on to said control means 20 of the machine is appropriately set as a result, i.e. based on such convention.
At 211, after the electromagnetic has been caused to definitely close, the level control switch or probe is used to determine, with the aid of means known in the art, the residual amount of water in the tub. Additionally, the water lying under the tub, and not measured by the level control switch, must of course be duly taken into account, because it is part of the total amount of water let into the machine; it should be noted that on the bottom of the tub there is ideally present just a minimum amount of the water.
At 212, the total amount of water let into the machine is calculated from the measurement data generated by the flowmeter 15.
At 213, the amount of water measured as per 211 above is subtracted from the amount of water measured as per 212 above, thereby obtaining the “net” amount of water absorbed by the clothes in the washload under steady-state or balance water-absorption conditions.
At 214, the obtained result is rectified on the basis of the information entered by the user concerning the type of fabrics in the washload (specific water absorption properties) to obtain, through easily done, automatic interpolations and means that are well known as such in the art, the final value of the weight of the “dry” washload.
From this moment on, the program goes on with its sequence of operations in an easily imaginable manner that has no relevance as far as the present invention is concerned.
It can at this point be more readily appreciated that the above-described method can be implemented in a clothes washing machine of a generally known kind, and operating based on the wash-liquor re-circulation principle, without any modification or adaptation being required as far as the hardware is concerned, as long as the control unit 20 of the machine is duly provided and set with an appropriate operation program including also the information and data that have been previously found experimentally in that same type of washing machine. In this connection, reference should be made to the diagram illustrated in
It should be specially noticed that the points C1, C2 and C3 on the curve A represent the instants at which the electromagnetic valve is closed and, therefore, starting from each one of these points the level starts to decrease, whereas at the instants indicated at M1, M2 and M3 said level starts to increase again; it will also be readily appreciated that the electromagnetic valve is caused to open a certain short time in advance of such instants, because it should also be considered that there will unavoidably be a small delay from the moment at which the electromagnetic valve is triggered to open to the moment at which there is an actual increase in the level of the water in the tub, due to the need for the water inlet circuit 3A to be first filled and the water to be allowed to reach the bottom of the tub.
In correspondence to the point C4 there occurs the last water refilling, after which, once that the level has been ascertained in a conventional manner to have stabilized during the period P, using one of the methods described under 209 and 210 above to that purpose, the operations described under 211, 212, 213, and 214 above are carried out in view of obtaining the desired value of the weight of the washload.
The above description has been set forth in an intentionally synthetic, i.e. concise manner so as to be more readily understood in the basic logic thereof; electronic-type and similar technicalities, along with a too detailed explanation of the contents and the functions of the blocks in
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