Throughout the home, a need exists to store a large variety of different items. This is particularly true of garage and utility areas where a vast array of products have been developed to increase the comfort level of living. The accumulation of these various objects and products gives rise to a need for adequate storage of those items when not in use.
Various cabinets for storing household items such as gardening tools, automotive supplies, barbeque accessories and the like are well known. One of the more popular types of cabinets for storing household items is a wall cabinet with a flipper door. Cabinets with flipper doors are well-known in the prior art. Flipper doors are opened by pulling the bottom of the door upward in a 90 degree arc such that the door is parallel to the top wall of the cabinet. The flipper door is then slid into the opening adjacent the top wall such that the opening is completely exposed. The movement of the flipper door is usually accomplished through use of a rack and pinion assembly. Usually the rack is located on the inside of the sidewalls of the cabinet, while the pinion is connected to an axle or rod which is attached to the door by brackets or hinges. Illustrative of such cabinets with flipper door systems are U.S. Pat. No. 644,434 to Macey; U.S. Pat. No. 657,017 to Tobey; U.S. Pat. No. 726,411 to Knight; U.S. Pat. No. 726,957 to Macey; U.S. Pat. No. 761,312 to Luellen; U.S. Pat. No. 1,288,665 to Page; U.S. Pat. No. 3,339,995 to Bencene; U.S. Pat. No. 3,748,005 to Chovanec et al; U.S. Pat. No. 3,794,401 to Dean et al; U.S. Pat. No. 4,265,502 to Blodee et al; U.S. Pat. No. 4,375,907 to Vander Kooi et al; U.S. Pat. No. 4,600,254 to Whalen; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,641,896 to Iimura et al.
Cabinets including drop doors and counterbalanced doors are also well known in the art, and are often preferred over other cabinets because the doors are less likely to produce the guillotine effect which may be caused by heavier flipper doors.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,258,948 to Garrison describes a bookcase unit with a drop door which uses a rack and pinion system similar to that used with a flipper door. However, instead of the door swinging outward and being stored adjacent to the top wall, the rack and pinion system is used to drop the door vertically down past the bottom of the unit. The pinion is attached to a rod which extends through loops in the hinges located at the top of the door. A runway located on the front inner sides of the bookcase contains a deep portion and a shallow portion. The shallow portion contains the rack which coacts with the pinion and allows the door to drop smoothly. The deep portion is engaged by the end of the rod which extends through the pinion. A spring is also provided around the rod which assists to counteract the effects of gravity and to achieve a more gradual dropping of the door. This door style lacks the space saving feature of the flipper door and tends to hinder access to lower cabinets or shelves.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,557,958 to Motta et al. discloses a storage bin with a counterbalanced door. The assembly includes panels forming a bin or cabinet, and a flipper door operably attached to the bin by a pair of opposing modules. Each module includes a body forming a groove in the form of a curvilinear track along its upper edge, and the door includes a follower operably engaging the track. Each module further includes a spring biased lever pivoted to the body of the module at a mid-lever point. A first leg of the lever is pivoted to the door at a door pivot point, and an oppositely extending second leg is connected to a spring biased force generating device. The arrangement is constructed to counterbalance the door in most intermediate positions.
Cabinets including an over-the-top door are also well known in the art and are often preferred over other cabinets because the doors do not take up space within the cabinet when opened. Such cabinets and doors often use a sliding hinge arrangement, where a pair of hinges are attached to the top and front of the cabinet and a track is attached to a side of the door for both slidably and pivotally engaging the hinge. The door opens by sliding the door upwardly and/or outwardly until the door can be slid onto the top of the cabinet for storage in an open position.
A problem is that these pivot/slide hinged doors can close with guillotine-like motion if the doors are prematurely released when partially open. This results in the doors moving vertically downwardly by gravity with a potentially unsafe speed and force unless proper care is used. Some cabinet manufacturers have conceived of alternatives to reduce the potential or likelihood of such accidental downward movement of the doors. However, the known alternatives are costly, include an unacceptable number of components, are mechanically too complex, and/or are difficult to assemble.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,615,570 to Goodman describes a cabinet with a flipper door which is stored horizontally above the top wall of the cabinet when in the open position. The flipper door is operated by a rack and pinion assembly. The rack is located on the upper inside wall of the cabinet and includes a lower guide channel. The pinion gears are rotatably coupled to each other by a transverse axle. The terminal ends of the axle extend through the pinion gears and slidably engage the lower guide channel. The flipper door of the cabinet is larger than the cabinet opening in order to cover the edges of the side walls when the door is closed. The rack is also provided with an upper guide channel. A link is attached between the transverse axle of the rack and pinion assembly and the door hinges. The stud shaft which secures the link to the hinge extends past the link to slidably engage the upper guide channel and to create a pivot axis which is shifted forward a sufficient amount to accommodate the extra width of the flipper door. The configuration of the door in this reference requires extra space above the cabinet for the door which also prevents stacking of the cabinets. U.S. Pat. No. 6,007,171, to Varellas-Olree discloses a cabinet assembly with an over the top door. The assembly includes a cabinet, a follower, and a mating guide. The cabinet is configured with a front opening. The door is configured to close the front opening. The sliding hinge structures operably support the door on the cabinet for pivotal and sliding movement between a closed position covering the front opening, and an open position uncovering the front opening and storing the door above the cabinet. The follower and the mating guide are separate from the hinge structures and operably attach an upper edge of the door to a front edge of the cabinet. The follower and guide constrain the door to a pivotal movement as the door is initially opened to prevent a sliding guillotine-like movement when the door opened.
Such prior art systems fail to meet all of the needs of manufacturers to provide a product that can be easily manufactured, packaged and shipped, or the needs of consumers requiring structural integrity combined with modularity and aesthetic appearance. Moreover, because these devices do not break down they are difficult to ship from the manufacturer to the consumer.
Paramount among such needs is a panel system which creates cabinet walls which resist panel separation, buckling and racking. Structure is a further consideration; the cabinet formed by the panels must tie into the flipper door and back panel in such a way as to unify the entire enclosure. Also, from a versatility standpoint, a flipper door should be present which can be easily opened and closed after assembly of the side, top, bottom and back panels, and which provides security and dependable pivoting access to the contents of the wall cabinet without the guillotine-like motion associated with the prior art.
There are also commercial considerations that must be satisfied by any viable wall cabinet system or kit; considerations which are not entirely satisfied by state of the art products. The wall cabinet must be formed of relatively few component parts that are inexpensive to manufacture by conventional techniques. The wall cabinet must also be capable of being packaged and shipped in a knocked-down state.
In addition, there are ergonomic needs that a wall cabinet system must satisfy in order to achieve acceptance by the end user. The system must be easily and quickly assembled using minimal hardware and requiring a minimal number of tools. Further, the system must not require excessive strength to assemble or include heavy component parts. Moreover, the system must assemble together in such a way so as not to detract from the internal storage volume of the resulting wall cabinet or otherwise negatively affect the utility of the wall cabinet.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds