American Sterilizer Company

Richard A McBride

John C Houston

Ronald P Krahe

Peter T Miraldi

Kristine M Kaehler

An apparatus for removing the slack from motorized cables used to control doors on sterilizers and autoclaves without the need for electro-mechanical brakes or oversized gear motors. The apparatus is adapted to be used with a door systems wherein a cable having the one end thereof attached to a motorized take-up drum and the other end thereof attached to a slack removing weight is used control the opening and closing of a door. The apparatus includes a stop plate that is rigidly fastened to the sterilizer or autoclave and a corresponding stop member that is rigidly attached to the cable. The stop plate, in conjunction with the stop member, serve to restrict the movement of the cable in only one direction thus keeping the portion of cable supporting the door taut. When additional cable is unwound from the take-up drum, the slack weight causes the cable to move in a direction away from the stop plate to keep the cable taut. The present invention also affords the gear motor controlling the take-up drum with an amount of time to develop the amount of torque required to lift the door and overcome the inertia of the system. In addition, monitoring means may be added to monitor the movement of the slack weight to determine whether the door has jammed.

Apparatus for eliminating slack in motorized cables

A steam sterilization cycle having a conditioning stage, a sterilizing stage, a drying stage and an air admission stage which provides maximum removal of entrapped air from full or partial porous loads. The conditioning stage includes a plurality of pressure/vacuum pulses. The final vacuum pulses are deeper than the initial pulses. The sterilizing stage includes a diffusion dwell come-up which gradually increases the temperature and pressure of the chamber to the predetermined sterilization temperature by a sequence of pressure rises followed by pressure plateaus which permit substantially complete steam penetration of the load and substantial equalization of the actual load temperature and the temperature sensed by the sterilizer controls and substantially eliminates superheating the chamber. The cycle may also include a step for detecting and reacting to unacceptable levels of noncondensable gas present in the chamber during the sterilization stage.

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Erie, PA, United States of America

Richard A McBride