The invention relates to a wall element for side walls of shelves, cupboards or transport trolleys, particularly for storage and transportation of laboratory and/or medical products, said element being formed in one piece as a profiled plate member with protruding guide members for supporting shelves or trays.

Laboratory and medical equipment and other products for use in hospitals are often stored in stationary shelves or cupboards or in cupboard or transport trolleys accommodating an arrangement of shelves, trays or baskets, some of which may have a relatively great depth.

In addition to requirements of a safe and reliable fixing of the shelves, trays or baskets so as to keep them in place and expose them to a minimum extent to vibrations during transportation, and a functional design allowing easy cleaning according to the hygienic standards applied to hospital equipment, it is usually desired to have the best possible access to direct removal of the stored objects with the least possible disturbance of their ordered arrangement on the shelves or trays.

In a design having solely horizontal shelves or trays the latter desire may be difficult to fulfil, if a requirement of a great storing capacity with a resulting relatively close arrangement of the shelves or trays above each other is to be complied with simultaneously. An easier access to removal together with a relatively great storing capacity may be obtained by arranging t e shelves, trays or baskets in inclined positions tilting downwards against the front side of the shelves or cupboard.

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In known shelves, cupboards or cupboard or transport trolleys the shelves or trays are ^' usually placed in guide rails which may be formed integrally with the wall element such as known from DE-^B-15 29 72 , or they may possibly be removably fixed to the vertical side walls. In order to avoid vibrations of the shelves or trays _.- ^** .;_ such guide rails have usually a relatively narrow longi¬ tudinal track for edge rails or flanges on the shelves or trays. Thereby the shelves or cupboard arrangement gets a permanent character since displacement of the rails secured to the side walls is difficult and time- consuming. Normally it must be determined beforehand whether the shelves or trays are to be positioned horizontally or inclined or there should possibly be both horizontal and inclined shelves or trays.

In addition the narrow tracks of the guide rails often give cleaning problems with respect to accumula¬ tions of dust or dirt that can only ^" be removed with difficulty.

In order to remedy these functional disadvantages a wall element according to the invention is character¬ ized in that said guide members are of prismatic shape and form a matrix-like arrangement for providing a set of parallel horizontal tracks and at least one set of parallel inclined tracks to accommodate side edges or flanges on said shelves and/or trays.

With this design the need for separate guide rails having narrow tracks can be abolished. Rearrangement from a horizontal to an inclined arrangement of shelves or trays may be effected without difficulty and as a rule without emptying the shelves or trays. Moreover, since both horizontal and inclined shelves and trays may be present in the same shelves construction or cup- board a considerably improved flexibility of arrange- ^" merit is obtained.

Since the guide members formed integrally with the wall element may be positioned with a relatively greater

separation than corresponding to the track width of the usual guide rails and may additionally be formed with . relatively softly rounded edges, a considerably . improved cleaning comfort is additionally obtained. In a relatively simple embodiment having only one set of inclined tracks said guide members may have a substantially parallelogram-shaped cross-section. Thereby two opposing sides of each guide member will be horizontal and the two other opposing sides will be inclined with an inclination that will determine the inclination of the inclined tracks.

However a preferred embodiment of a wall element according to the invention is characterized in that said matrix-like arrangement comprises a first and a second set of guide members arranged in alternating rows a ^' nd columns to provide two sets of parallel inclined tracks with opposite, equal inclinations, the guide members of said first set having a pentagonal cross- section with a horizontal top face and two pairs of mutually opposed inclined faces with inclinations corresponding to each of said sets of parallel inclined tracks, whereas the guide members of the second set have a triangular cross-section with a horizontal bottom face and two inclined faces with inclinations corresp- onding individually to each of said sets of parallel inclined tracks, whereby each horizontal track is defined downwards by top faces of guide members of said first set and upwards by bottom.faces of guide members of said second set, whereas each inclined track ±s defined' downwards by alternating inclined faces on guide means ^* σ£..sa£d first and" second ^~ .set, respectively, aaό. upwards solely by inclined faces on guide means of said first set.

Since a wall element in this design has two sets of inclined tracks with opposite, equal inclinations, ^" the same wall element may be used in both the rightr hand and the left-hand sides of a shelves structure

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or a cupboard.

In the following the invention will be explained in further detail with reference to the drawings in which Fig. 1 is a plan view of a preferred embodiment of a wall element according to the invention. Fig. 2 a perspective view of the wall element shown in Fig. 1 , Fig. 3 a top view of a further embodiment, and Fig. 4 a plan view of a more simple embodiment.

The wall element 1 in Figs. 1 and .2 is designed as a profiled single plate member made, e.g. of a plastic material and adapted to be secured against the inner side of the supporting wall. In accordance with the invention the element 1 is formed in one piece with an integrated matrix-like arrangement of prismatic guide members 2 and 3 protruding from the inner side of the element 1 to provide a set of parallel horizontal tracks 4 and, in the illustrated embodiment, two sets of parallel inclined tracks 5 and 6 having opposite equal inclina¬ tions.

In addition,the wall element 1 constitutes a rectangu¬ lar module member having horizontal top and bottom edges 7 and 8 and vertical side edges 9 and 10. As a result of the design with two sets of inclined tracks 5 and 6 the element may be used both in the right-hand and the left- hand side of a shelves structure, cupboard or transport trolley. When used in the left-hand side of the illustr- ated element the. tracks 5 tilting downwardly to the left will serve inclined arrangement of shelves and trays and when used in the right-hand side the tracks 6 tilt¬ ing downwardly to the right will serve this purpose. To provide the sets of inclined tracks 5 and 6 as well as the set of horizontal tracks 4 the above-mentioned ^' matrix-like arrangement comprises in the embodiment shown a first set of guide members 2 and a second set of guide members 3 arranged in alternating rows and

columns.

The guide ^' members 2 in the first set have a pentagonal cross-section with a horizontal top face 11 and two pairs of mutually opposed inclined faces _. 12,14 and 13,15 respectively with inclination corre-*-- sponding to each of the sets of inclined tracks 5 and 6 respectively. The guide members 3 of the second set have a substantially triangular cross-section with a horizontal bottom face x 6 and two inclined faces 17 and 18 having inclinations corresponding to each of the track sets 5 and 6. Dependent on the inclination of the inclined tracks some of the guide members 3 may be formed however with bevelled corners as shown at 3' . Thereby the horizontal tracks 4 will be downwards defined by the top faces 11 of the guide members 2 of a row in the matrix-like arrangement and upwards by the bottom faces 16 of the guide _. members 3 of the adjacent overlying alternating row. The inclined tracks 5 and 6 will be downwards defined by inclined faces 12,17 and 15,18 respectively of the guide members 2 and 3 in alternating order of succession, said inclined faces having an inclination corresponding to the track in question, whereas they are defined upwards by one of the downwards facing inclined faces 14 and 13 respectively on the guide members 2.

For the purpose of safe positioning of shelves or trays in the inclined tracks 5 and 6 the guide members 2 and 3 in the embodiment shown are formed so that the inclined faces 12,17 and 15,18 on the guide members 2 and 3 respectively defining the tracks 5 and 6 down¬ wardly have a little greater inclination than the inclined faces 14 and 13 on the guide members 2 defining the tracks 5 and 6 upwardly. Thereby the heights of each of the inclined tracks will decrease in the upwardsdirection so that a certain wedge effect

is obtained when introducing shelves or trays in these tracks.

Furthermore, t the ^" lower end of each of the. ^* inclined tracks 5 and 6 there is provided a hook-like stop member 19 formed as an integrated part of the element 1 and covering part of the track height at the opening. When being ^' introduced the side edge or flange of a shelf or tray is guided above the stop member 19 and when the shelf or tray is fully introduced it is released to get into abutment with the stop member 1 by itself.

For correspondingly safe positioning in the horizontal tracks there is provided in the embodiment shown at both ends of these tracks a further guide member 20 which is likewise formed as an integrated part of the wall element 1 and has a stop bead21 formed as a stop for the horizontal track.

As most clearly visible in Fig. 1 the wall element 1 is designed as a module to be combined with other corresponding wall elements in that the horizontal top edge 7 and the horizontal bottom edge 8 have the same separation from the top face 11 of the guide members 2 in the upper horizontal row and the bottom faces 16 of the guide members 3 in the lower row respectively, said separation being equal to half the height of the horizontal tracks 4.

In the embodiment shown the guide members 3 are designed as shown in Fig. 3 with open inwardly facing ends as short prismatic pins. However nothing prevents the inwardly facing ends from being closed. In Fig. 3 a modification relative to the embodiment in Figs. 1 and 2 is shown in which the wall element 22 instead of being designed as a single plate member requiring fixing to a supporting wall is designed as a double-walled self-supporting cavity member provided at its vertical sides with means 23 for fixing it. o vertical tubes of a frame structure not shown. This embodiment is well suited for transportation trolleys

of the kind designed, as cart frames. Dependent on the choice of material and production technology also a single plate member may be designed to be self- supporting. Finally in Fig. 4 a simplified embodiment relative to Figs. 1 and 2 is illustrated showing a wall element 24 having only one set of inclined tracks 25 in addi¬ tion to the horizontal tracks 26. In this design which is somewhat cheaper the guide members 27 may have a substantially parallelogram-shaped cross-section as mentioned in the foregoing. On the other hand one and the same wall element may only be used in one side of a shelves structure or a cupboard.

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