Abstract: A cooking appliance including a plurality of separately controlled cooking areas, a first heating element positioned below one of the plurality of separately controlled cooking areas, a second heating element positioned below the same separately controlled cooking area as the first heating element, and an infinite switch electrically coupled with the first heating element and operable to energize the first heating element to supply heat to the separately controlled cooking area when the infinite switch is located at a first position. The switch has an operational tolerance, and the first heating element is sized such that the separately controlled cooking area is maintained below a target cooking temperature when the infinite switch is located at the first position and is operating at an upper limit of the operational tolerance.

Abstract: A cooking appliance has a cooktop including a plurality of separately controlled cooking areas. A first heating element and a second heating element are positioned below one of the separately controlled cooking areas. A control switch is electrically coupled to the first heating element and the second heating element and is operable to selectively energize the first heating element with single-phase AC power and selectively energize the second heating element with two-phase AC power.

Abstract: A cooking appliance includes a housing forming a food handling compartment, a door positioned at the front of the housing that is configured to rotate about a vertical axis, and a hinge assembly secured to the door. The hinge assembly includes a hinge pin extending along the vertical axis and a double slider-crank mechanism that is coupled to the hinge pin. As the door rotates about the vertical axis, the hinge assembly moves the vertical axis along an elliptical path.

Abstract: A microwave heating device and a method for heating a load using microwaves are provided. The microwave heating device comprises a cavity adapted to receive a load and at least two microwave sources for feeding microwave energy into the cavity through at least two feeding ports respectively. The microwave heating device further comprises at least two field sensors adapted to measure field strengths of the microwave energy in the cavity. A first field sensor is arranged at a first location for measuring the field strength representative of a mode fed from a first feeding port and a second field sensor is arranged at a second location for measuring the field strength representative of a mode fed from a second feeding port. The microwave heating device further comprises a control unit connected to the microwave sources and the field sensors for regulating the microwave sources based on the measured field strengths.

Abstract: A microwave oven and method for heating a load using microwaves are provided. The microwave oven comprises a cavity adapted to receive a load. The cavity is designed to support at least two predefined mode fields. For each predefined mode field, a resonance frequency in the cavity is known. Further, the microwave oven comprises a frequency-controllable microwave source for feeding microwaves into the cavity via at least one feeding port. The method comprises the steps of measuring a signal reflected from the cavity as a function of the operating frequency of the microwave source and identifying resonance frequencies in the cavity based on the measured signal. Further, the method comprises the steps of selecting, for the predefined modes, at least two of the identified resonance frequencies based on the known resonance frequencies and switching the operating frequency of the microwave source using the selected frequencies.