U-line Corporation

Jack L Vaughn

Thomas W Rand

Joseph E Braun

Andrew J Doberstein

William A Reed

Lawrence D Moye

Ami Marie Verhalen

Daniel R Bullis, Jr

Philip J Uihlein

Jennifer U Straszewski

Jeffrey A Ziminski

Jennifer U Strazewski

Joseph H Zyduck

Dean G Byczynski

A drawer refrigerator has a partitioned cabinet with one or more pull-out drawers. The pull-out drawer(s) can have an adjustable divider fence for dividing the storage space of the drawer. The divider fence can have two dividers each defined by two spaced apart elongated rods that are coupled together at a hub and have end pieces with flat surfaces that abut inside surfaces of the drawer walls. A hand operated screw knob mounted to the hub can be used to lock the position of the divider fence.

Drawer refrigerator with divider and divider for refrigerator drawer

A refrigeration unit with improved storage and accessibility features has a thermally insulated cabinet and door defining a storage space with a plurality of support elements. The support elements include easily removable door shelves and horizontal cabinet shelves that can be removed or repositioned without the door being fully opened due to dished regions adjacent the shelf supports that allow the shelves to be pivoted and removed rather than slid straight out of the cabinet. Indicia on one of the shelves follows the contour of one of the door shelves to indicate approximately the shelf space occupied by an adjacent door shelf and thus where items can be set without interfering with the closure of the door. The refrigeration unit also includes a cam assembly at the lower door hinge which biases the door closed when open approximately 35 degrees or less. The refrigeration unit also includes features for attaching an overlay panel to the door easily.

Refrigeration unit

Door

Grille

A wine cooler unit has a refrigerated cabinet housing two pull-out assemblies, each having a door panel and one or more wine racks. One rack can be mounted to the door panel, and one or more follower racks can be extended and retracted by movement of the door panel mounted rack, or by independent manual movement thereof. Two or more racks can be pulled out from the cabinet in a staggered or cascading fashion in which an upper rack extends from the cabinet to a lesser extent than a next lower rack to provide access to the bottles on each rack. The door panels can be made of a glass thermopane allowing visual inspection of the contents inside the cabinet. The cabinet can be cooled by a refrigeration system having two evaporators, which provide two independent cooling zones, one for each pull-out assembly. A capacitance-operated control can be provided under the glass front of one door panel for controlling the temperature zones inside the cabinet.

Pull-out access cooler unit

Cooler front

Control display

Handle

A drawer refrigerator, including an evaporator, compressor and condenser, has a partitioned cabinet with two vertically stacked pull-out drawers having drawer bins. A single evaporator is located adjacent both drawer cavities and is partitioned to keep the temperature in both drawer bins approximately equal. The pull-out drawers can have a bottle bin with recesses holding the necks of wine, soda or like bottles. The bottle bin slides on the top edges of the drawer bin at its sides and can be moved front to back. The pull-out drawers can have an underside compartment opening at both sides of the drawer containing a removable storage bin. The pull-out drawers can also have an adjustable divider fence with pairs of lateral and transverse divider rods extending between the side walls and between the door panels and the rear walls of the drawer bins. The rods are coupled by a hub having a hand operated screw knob for locking the position of the fence.

Divider for refrigerator drawer

Cooler

Stacked drawer refrigerator

Growing community of inventors

Muskego, WI, United States of America

Jack L Vaughn