General Electric Company

Walter E Lewis

Bohdan Hurko

James A White

Richard A Stich

Frank L Rice

A refrigerator door has its plastic inner panel, which has a plurality of container supporting shelves extending therefrom, stiffened through forming integral vertical stringers adjacent each other across substantially the entire width of the surface of the inner panel between the shelves. Gussets extend from one end of each of the integral stringers into one of the upper and lower surfaces of each adjacent shelf. The integral stringers are V-shaped or U-shaped in cross section. The gussets are V-shaped when the integral stringers are V-shaped and may be V-shaped or U-shaped when the integral stringers are U-shaped. The integral stringers stiffen the entire door without adding material and control the stiffness through the cross sectional moment of inertia of each of the integral stringers. When there is a lack of space beneath the bottom shelf, the gussets cannot be employed, but a shadow line is used to increase the moment of inertia. The integral stringers have an aesthetic pattern in either the V-shaped or U-shaped configuration.

Appliance door having stiffened inner panel with shelves and method of

A friction applying assembly for a panel movable from a first position to a second position which includes a mounting plate rigidly secured to the panel with the plate having a non-circular aperture. There is a hinge support arm having at one end a non-circular aperture and a bolt arm having a head at one end, which bolt arm is inserted into the non-circular aperture of the hinge support arm to prevent relative movement between the bolt arm and hinge support arm. The bolt arm is elongated having a large diameter section adjacent the head and a smaller diameter section at the opposite end and a tapered conically shaped intermediate section between the large diameter section and small diameter section. An elongated bushing body having one end inserted into the non-circular aperture of the mounting plate is secured thereto to prevent relative movement between the bushing and mounting plate. The bushing has an internal tapered conically shaped cavity complementary to and in frictional engagement with the intermediate section of the bolt arm. A compression spring having one end seated against the bushing and the opposite end retained by fastener means on the smaller diameter section of the bolt arm urges the bushing into movable frictional engagement with the tapered conically shaped intermediate section of the bolt arm.

Friction applying assembly

An assembly for combining an appliance, for example a microwave oven, with a range vent hood having an appliance housing and a support structure for mounting the housing to a wall or to the floor of an overhead cabinet above a conventional cooking range is disclosed. The support structure includes a back wall upon which ribs are formed so as to space the rear of the housing from the back to form a channelized air space therebetween. A plate is attached to a lower portion of the back wall and extends forwardly toward and beneath the front of the appliance housing to form a second channelized air space between the plate and bottom of the housing. The two air spaces thus formed, communicate with one another to permit cooking gases and vapors from the range to be drawn upward through openings in the plate, then through the two air spaces and out the assembly on or near a top rear portion thereof. Ventilating means for the microwave oven completely separate and distinct from the first and second channelized air vent spaces is also provided so that the range heed vent feature and the microwave vent feature of the assembly can be used independently from one another or concurrently as desired.

Ventilation system for combination microwave oven and exhaust vent

An automatic cleaning arrangement for a glass-ceramic cooking surface which is adapted to remove baked-on soils from the surface regions surrounding the individual cooking areas by the process of oxidation. Additional thin film heaters are located under the regions to be cleaned and are activated by a timer controlled power supply circuit. An interlock switch in the cook heater line disables the cook heater when the cleaning operation is in progress. The power supply circuit for the thin film heaters is arranged to disable automatically the cooking heaters when a break occurs in the glass-ceramic surface in the region of the thin film heaters.

Self-cleaning glass-ceramic surface cooking unit

A pyrolytic self-cleaning oven has an oven door latch mechanism with an elongated latch arm that has a shifting pivot means and a tapered latch hook so the latch mechanism will cause the compression of the door gasket for sealing the oven cavity during the self-cleaning cycle. There is a locking means for the latch mechanism which functions when the door is locked and the oven temperature is above normal cooking temperatures. The locking means includes a bimetal actuator that senses the temperature of the oxidation unit in the oven exhaust system.

Growing community of inventors

Louisville, KY, United States of America

Walter E Lewis