The invention relates to refrigeration appliances and, in particular, to improvements in bottom-mount freezer compartments.
A popular style of household refrigerator has an upper refrigerated compartment or chamber with one or two vertically hinged doors and a lower drawer-like freezer compartment that slides open. Bearings are often used to facilitate sliding action of the freezer basket in and out of the freezer compartment. The location of these bearings in the freezer compartment makes lubrication problematic since the low temperature environment can increase viscosity and, therefore, decrease the effectiveness of a lubricant. There is a need for a sliding support for the freezer basket and door that is not affected by the low temperatures of the freezer compartment.
In the case of a new refrigerator, it is customary to remove the doors of the appliance unit in order to facilitate the delivery of the unit to a residence where, frequently, doors and corridors are too narrow to allow a fully assembled appliance unit to pass. Disassembly and then reassembly of the doors are performed by delivery personnel of the newly purchased appliance unit. This door removal and reassembly add to the cost of delivery. It is desirable, therefore, that doors are easily removed and replaced with a minimum requirement of skill and labor and, preferably, without tools.
The invention provides improvements in a bearing support system for a basket and door of a bottom-mounted freezer compartment of a household refrigerator. In accordance with the invention, the bearing support is external of the freezer compartment so that lubricant is not adversely affected by exposure to the low temperatures of the freezer environment. Further, the bearing support system enables the associated door to be readily removed from the support system without tools and with negligible labor time.
A refrigerator appliance including a cabinet enclosing an upper chamber and a lower chamber, the lower chamber having a container, such as a basket for holding frozen goods, the basket being slidably mounted to the appliance for movement through an opening in the cabinet between a closed position within the cabinet and an open position at least partially out of the cabinet, a door associated with the basket adapted to close the cabinet opening when the basket is in the closed position fully received in the cabinet and move away from the cabinet opening to allow the basket to be opened, the door being supported by a pair of horizontal slides located externally of the lower chamber, the slides being disposed adjacent opposite vertical edges of the door, the door being directly supported on the horizontal slides independently of the basket.
In the illustrated embodiment, the bearing support system comprises a pair of parallel round tubes, each carried in a low mounted, low profile linear bearing adjacent the front of the refrigeration cabinet. Preferably, the bearings and associated tubes occupy the same horizontal planes as supports for a pair of rollers provided at the bottom of the appliance unit to enable the unit to be rolled in and out of place. Thus, the bearing support system thus avoids adding height to the appliance and encroachment into the freezer space. Moreover, the compactness of the linear bearing enables the bearing to share a mounting assembly point with an adjacent one of the floor rollers. A housing of the linear bearing for the support tubes is bolted to a bracket which also serves as a mount for the floor roller and parts provided for vertical adjustment of the floor roller.
The freezer basket and door support tubes at their forward ends have vertical posts or stanchions on which the door is located. The stanchions are wedge-shaped and are received in cavities having complementary wedge shapes thereby enabling the door to be installed on the support tubes by simply lowering the door over the stations. Conversely, the door can be removed from the bearing support tubes and stanchions by simply lifting it. Where an appliance unit must pass through a tight clearance area, the stanchions can be removed from the support tubes and the tubes can be fully retracted into the base of the appliance.
The lower door 13 is associated with a container such as a drawer-like bin or basket 14, as is generally customary. The door 13 is carried on a pair of horizontal cylindrical support tubes or slides 16 disposed below and external of the freezer compartment or chamber. The support tubes 16, preferably formed of steel, are slidable in respective linear bearings 17. Ideally, the bearings 17 are of the recirculating ball-type of known construction. The tubes 16 have a length approaching the front-to-back depth of the refrigerator 10. At their front ends, the bearing support tubes 16 are fitted with stanchions 18 that, in the illustrated case, are hollow sheet metal weldments. The stanchions 18 are vertically extending, relatively narrow four-sided wedges. More specifically, each side of a stanchion 18 has a portion that lies in a flat plane and has a profile of a truncated isosceles triangle. At a lower end, a stanchion 18 has a horizontal cylindrical steel sleeve 19 proportioned to receive a respective support bearing tube 16 with a slip fit.
The stanchions 18 are releasably locked on the outer end of a respective bearing support tube 16 with a “hitch pin” 21 received in aligned holes in the sleeve 19 and tube 16. A pin 21 can be manually removed and installed without need of a tool. A spring biased detent ball in the pin 21 assures that the pin stays in a tube 16 and sleeve 19 unless the pin is forcibly manually pulled by way of an attached finger grip ring.
The lower door 13 is a hollow structure, typically an injection molded assembly of suitable plastic(s). A bottom wall 26 of the lower door 13 is molded or otherwise provided with surface structure in the form of female cavities 27 that can each have a shape complementary to the shape of the stanchions 18 to fit tightly over a respective one of the stanchions 18. The complementary taper geometry of the stanchions 18 received in the door 13 and receiving cavities 27 (
Referring to
It should be evident that this disclosure is by way of example and that various changes may be made by adding, modifying or eliminating details without departing from the fair scope of the teaching contained in this disclosure. The invention is therefore not limited to particular details of this disclosure except to the extent that the following claims are necessarily so limited.
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