Cabinets, and more particularly, storage cabinets can be found in every commercial enterprise and residence. These cabinets range from modern, sleek, custom-made cabinets, to "older" kitchen cabinets subsequently hung in a basement, laundry room or a garage to provide additional storage space.
While the requirements for these cabinets and the environment to which they may be subjected vary widely, they all must be able to contain whatever is stored within them. But the usefulness of a cabinet is not solely a function of its ability to contain stored items. Ease of placing items in and removing items from a cabinet is also important to the usefulness of a cabinet. The ease of placing items in and removing items from a cabinet is affected by how easily a cabinet door is opened or closed and by whether an open cabinet door will remain open. Further, the storing function of a cabinet is substantially aided if the cabinet door is maintained in a closed condition when the interior is not being accessed.
The doors of cabinets are often controlled with a variety of catches. One known catch is a clip-type catch that includes a clip or roller attached to the cabinet that accepts a tongue attached to the door. The clip-type catches maintain a door in a closed position with a combination of adaptive fit and friction between the parts. Such catches usually require some force to close the door completely, and can prevent the door from closing completely if the door is not forced to complete closure.
Magnetic catches that use a magnet on the cabinet and a metal plate on the door are often used. Such magnetic catches maintain doors in the closed position and help to close doors by the attraction of the magnet and the plate. On the other hand, a door with magnetic catches can undesirably close completely if the cabinet is not level or if environmental conditions, such as wind, place the door in a nearly closed position.
A variation of magnetic catch spring-loads the magnet so that pressing the cabinet door triggers a spring that impels the door into an open position. Such spring-loaded magnetic catches must be firmly closed completely in order to retension the spring, and do not solve the problem of the unwanted closing of the door by the attraction of the door to the cabinet.
Both the clip-type and magnetic catches usually require parts that are not integral to the body of the cabinet itself. These additional parts must be manufactured or purchased, and then installed on the cabinet. Further, these additional parts may themselves have moving parts that may fail through extended use or unfavorable environmental conditions. Similarly, kitchen cabinets often have multi-part hinges that must be separately manufactured and installed in the cabinet.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a cabinet having a catch that facilitates easy opening and closing of the cabinet. Desirably, such catches maintain doors open or closed, as desired. Advantageously, in addition to maintaining doors in an open or closed condition, the configuration of the catches actively aids complete opening and closing of the cabinet door. Most preferably, such a cabinet has the catches present as an integral part of the cabinet.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds