The present invention refers to the field of the furniture so-called having coplanar doors with a combined movement—in which the opening of the doors is carried out by making the doors slide one over the other—and in particular to furniture (more in general, to the spaces or the openings to be closed with doors) in which, for aesthetic reasons, the closed doors are placed close alongside each other so as to present a viewer with the most continuous surface possible.
In order to open one of the doors it is therefore necessary to disengage it from the adjacent door (or from the adjacent doors) causing them to perform a movement substantially perpendicular to its plane before making it slide parallel to itself to place it over the adjacent door (or over one of the adjacent doors).
Opening mechanisms able to cause a door to perform such a double movement are known to the art and widely used: one of such opening mechanisms is disclosed, purely by way of non limiting example, in European Patent No. 823 527.
The opening mechanisms of the prior art essentially comprise a longitudinal guide (normally an extruded section) fixed to the frame of the furniture unit and, for each door, at least one assembly comprising a first slide sliding along the guide, a second slide sliding transversally on the first slide from a resting (retracted) position to a working (extracted) position, deflector means (normally consisting of a guide bent at 90°, fixed to the bottom of longitudinal guide) to bring the second slide from the resting position to the working position (and vice versa) and return means to bring the second slide back to the resting position.
The second slide carries the door, is brought into to the working position by an appendix thereof which engages in the deflector means, is kept in the working position by said appendix which engages in a longitudinal track formed in the guide and, when it is in the extracted position, translates along the longitudinal guide together with the first slide.
In order to apply the deflector means to the longitudinal guide, it is necessary to remove a portion of the above mentioned track by a mechanical process which increases the production times and costs of the opening mechanism.
Furthermore, the opening mechanisms of the prior art have (or can have) the additional drawback that their length must be correlated to that of the door: it is therefore necessary to produce (and to stock) opening mechanisms of different lengths to manage the opening/closing of doors of different lengths, with obvious increases in the costs of production, of stock management, etc.
Object of the present invention is to produce an opening mechanism for coplanar doors with a combined movement that is free from the limits and the drawbacks presented by the opening mechanisms of the prior art; this object is achieved with an opening mechanism that has the characteristics set out in independent claim 1.
Further advantageous characteristics of the invention form the subject matter of the dependent claims.
An opening mechanism realized according to the invention differs from an opening mechanism of the prior art essentially in that the second slide can rotate with respect to the first slide around a pin integral with the first slide and presents a curved space (henceforth called a “cam”), wherein guide means integral with the first slide is received.
The opening mechanism preferably further comprises holding means, controlled by a control surface situated on the bottom of the guide along which the opening mechanism slides, which lock the second slide in an extracted position, preventing it from being brought back into the retracted position by return means belonging to the opening mechanism.
The invention will be now described with reference to an exemplifying but non limiting embodiment, described in the appended figures, wherein:
In the appended figures, corresponding elements will be designated by the same reference numerals.
Also visible in
As in the opening mechanisms of the prior art, on the bottom of the longitudinal guide 3 there are deflector means 40 (
Since, as can be seen from
The appendix 53 and the deflector means 40 are not visible in
For greater clarity of the description, in
From
Furthermore, in the appended figures, the opening mechanism 1 is applied to the door 2 in an off-centre position with respect to the midline of said door, rather than at the centre of the door, as normally occurs in an opening mechanism of the prior art.
This off-centre position of the opening mechanism 1 allows a better “stacking” of the doors one over the other and allows the opening mechanism 1 to act also as a hinge for the door 2 during its opening (or closing) step, when the door 2 disengages from the adjacent door 2′ by means of a movement of rotation around the opening mechanism 1, before returning parallel to the longitudinal guide 3 (
These holding means 10, which can be seen better in
The end 103 of the lever 101 keeps the second slide 5 in the extracted position until it is disengaged from the stop means 61 by the action of the controlling surface 51 on the end 102 of the lever 101 (
When the door 2 is open, the end 102 of the lever 101 rests on the bottom of the guide 3 and the end 103 of the lever 101, urged by the spring, engages in the stop means 61 (
Without departing from the scope of the invention, it is possible to omit the holding means 10 and the control surface 51, which, however, must be replaced by the track present in the longitudinal guides of the opening devices of the prior art to hold the second slide in the extracted position.
The use of a second opening mechanism 1′ when the door 2 is too long to be carried by a single device 1 positioned at one end thereof is advantageous because it avoids having to produce and to stock opening mechanisms of different lengths; furthermore it reduces the stresses induced on the opening mechanism 1 by the weight of the door 2 and makes the movement of the door 2 more stable.
Without departing from the scope of the invention, the second opening mechanism 1′ comprises the holding means 10, but it does not comprise the cam 8 and the related guide means 7.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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MI2008A1766 | Oct 2008 | IT | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/IB2009/006961 | 9/25/2009 | WO | 00 | 3/31/2011 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
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WO2010/038127 | 4/8/2010 | WO | A |
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