Cooking appliance having a removable control panel
AssigneesBSH Home Appliances Corporation, BSH Hausgeräte GmbH
InventorsDaniel Davison, Charles Hanna, James Russell, Tyson White
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A removable control panel console for a cooking appliance may include a front panel having upper fingers that hook onto apertures in a bullnose feature of the appliance. The control panel console is pivotable in this configuration, and may be secured to the appliance by raising the front panel to fully insert the fingers into the apertures and fastening a bottom wall of the control panel to the appliance. Side walls of the control panel console may include tabs that are received into corresponding slots in a front surface of the appliance, providing an additional alignment and security feature.
Claims20
A cooking appliance comprising:
- a stove having a cooktop mounted above an oven;
- a bullnose extending from a front of the cooktop;
- and
- a removable control panel console including one or more user interface (UI) elements mounted to a front face of the control panel console and configured to control the cooktop, wherein bottom, left, and right walls extend orthogonally from the front face, and a plurality of spaced-apart fingers extend upward from a top edge of the front face, the fingers having hooked distal ends;
- wherein the control panel console is transitionable between (a) a first configuration, in which the hooked distal ends of the fingers are engaged with bottom edges of corresponding apertures in a bottom flange of the bullnose, such that the bottom wall of the control panel console is free to pivot away from the stove, and (b) a second configuration, in which the top edge of the control panel console abuts a bottom of the bullnose and the bottom wall is secured to the stove.
A stove comprising:
- a cooktop having a cooktop chassis mounted above an oven;
- a bullnose extending from a front of the cooktop, the bullnose including a downward-extending vertical flange having a plurality of spaced-apart apertures;
- and
- a removable control panel console including one or more user interface (UI) elements mounted to a front face of the control panel console and configured to control the cooktop, wherein bottom, left, and right walls extend orthogonally from the front face, one or more tabs protrude from distal edges of the left and right walls, and a plurality of spaced-apart fingers extend upward from a top edge of the front face;
- wherein the fingers of the control panel console are received by the apertures of the flange of the bullnose, the tabs of the left and right walls are received in corresponding slots of the front of the cooktop, and the bottom wall of the control panel console is removably fastened to a floor of the cooktop chassis.
A method for selectively coupling a control panel to a cooking appliance, the method comprising:
- hanging hooked ends of one or more fingers extending from a top edge of a front face of a control panel onto bottom edges of a corresponding one or more apertures in a downward-extending flange of a bullnose of a housing of a stove, such that a lower end of the control panel is pivotable toward and away from a face of the stove;
- pivoting the lower end of the control panel toward the face of the stove;
- lifting the control panel upward, such that the one or more fingers extend upward and behind the flange of the bullnose until the top edge of the front face of the control panel abuts the bullnose;
- and
- securing the control panel in place by fastening a bottom wall of the control panel to the stove.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.