General Electric Company

University of Illinois

Gautam Subbarao

Mark Wayne Wilson

Anand Ganesh Joshi

Hemachandran Umakanthan

Alexander Pinkus Rafalovich

Matthew William Davis

Ashutosh Kulkarni

Sanjay Manohar Anikhindi

Anil Kumar Tummala

Michael L Philpott

Thiruvalan Venkatesan

Chang Hyun Lee

Ramnath Vaidyanathan

R Sebastian Schrader

Eric A Hiller

A blower is provided having a fan element that is directly connected to a drive shaft. The drive shaft is attached to a wash drum and is rotated by a washer motor. When the washer motor rotates the drive shaft, the fan element also rotates and can move air through the washing machine appliance without the use of an additional blower motor. Alternatively, the fan element of the blower is directly connected to a motor shaft extending from the motor, such that when the motor shaft is rotated, the blower can move air through the washing machine appliance without the use of an additional blower motor.

Integration of blower with washer motor shaft or drive shaft

A refrigerator includes a housing having at least one refrigerator compartment, a door for accessing the at least one refrigerator compartment, and an ice-dispensing assembly. The ice-dispensing assembly includes an insulated housing arranged within the at least one refrigerator compartment, an ice-making device arranged within the insulated housing and configured to produce ice, an ice-storage container arranged within the insulated housing, and a dispenser arranged within the door and communicating with the ice-storage container, wherein the dispenser is configured to transfer ice from the ice-storage container to an external portion of the refrigerator.

Ice-dispensing assembly mounted within a refrigerator compartment

An air treatment system includes a housing defining a chamber, and an ultraviolet lamp positioned within the chamber. The housing further defines an air inlet at a first end portion of the housing and an air outlet at a second end portion of the housing opposing the first end portion. The chamber provides flow communication between the air inlet and the air outlet. At least one ultraviolet lamp is positioned within the chamber. The at least one ultraviolet lamp is positioned about a first axis and includes a first end and a second end spaced with respect to the first end along the first axis. The at least one ultraviolet lamp is configured for facilitating inactivating contaminants within air channeled through the chamber.

Air treatment system

A system and method for automatically estimating the optimized cost of a part during the course of design of the part on a computer-aided design (CAD) system by a designer. The method includes extracting parametric features of a current design from the CAD system. Manufacturing cost drivers are identified on the basis of the parametric features. The manufacturing cost drivers are translated into costs using process models. The costs are simultaneously optimized with respect to a plurality of operations within specified machine constraints using an algorithm with dynamically linked structures to obtain estimates of optimized costs and cost reasoning. An estimate of optimized costs and cost reasoning is fed back to the designer as an output display on an output device.

Integrated real-time feature based costing

Growing community of inventors

Louisville, KY, United States of America

Gautam Subbarao