Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.V.

Mun Thoh Ma

Yong Jiang

Mohankumar Valiyambath Krishnan

Tang Pong Har

Chandra Mohan Janakiraman

Lanying Ji

Ronald Albert Plantinga

Mong Hua Tan

Leo Hubert Maria Krings

L Bouhuys

Wa Chu

A system iron comprises an iron and a base that has a receiving area for receiving the iron. The base comprises a fastening device for fastening the iron to the base. The fastening device includes a first engagement member and a second engagement member arranged at mutually opposite sides of the receiving area. At least one of the engagement members is displaceable in a direction away from the other engagement member and is biased towards the other engagement member. With such a fastening device, a user can safely and conveniently lock the iron to the base using just one of his hands for gripping the main grip portion of the iron.

Fastening device for system irons

A steam ironing device includes a steam iron, a steam generator for generating steam and supplying steam to the steam iron, and a supply device for supplying water to the steam generator. During operation of the steam ironing device, scale is formed in the steam generator, and the water in the steam generator gradually gets contaminated with ions. In order to clean the steam generator and replace the water with fresh water, the steam generator is regularly subjected to an auto-rinsing process. A moment at which this process needs to take place is a moment at which an amount of scale and/or a concentration of ions have exceeded a predetermined maximum. The amount of scale and/or the concentration of ions are indirectly monitored by keeping account of a total quantity of water that has been supplied to the steam generator since a set starting point.

Measures for keeping a degree of contamination of a steam generator including its contents below a predetermined maximum

An ironing appliance () comprises an ironing device such as a steam iron and an ironing board () for supporting articles () to be ironed. In the ironing board (), Radio Frequency Identification readers () are arranged, which serve for identifying the fabric type of the articles () to be ironed, which are provided with a tag () containing this information. The ironing board () has a heater () for heating the articles to be ironed, and is also adapted to supplying steam to these articles. In an ironing process of a given article, the characteristics of the supply of steam and the temperature of the heater () are determined on the basis of the information obtained from the tag () of the article by the readers (). Due to the fact that the readers () are arranged in the ironing board (), the identification process and the process of determining appropriate ironing settings take place in a fast and accurate manner.

Ironing appliance comprising identification means for identifying the fabric type of articles to be ironed

A steam iron () comprises a steam conditioning device () having two vortex chambers (). Inside the vortex chambers (), directing means such as a conduit for directing a steam flow toward outlets () of the steam conditioning device () are arranged. Further, inside the vortex chambers (), vortex generating means are arranged, which are arranged along a path followed by the steam flow, and which are adapted to creating local pressure differences in the steam flow in order to obtain local vortices in the steam flow. By means of the vortices, during operation of the steam conditioning device (), water drops which are present in the steam flow are broken down to a smaller particle size. In this way, the steam conditioning device () is capable of producing mist-steam or dry steam.

Steam ironing device having vortex generation elements for obtaining vortices in the steam flow

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Singapore, Singapore

Mun Thoh Ma