DESCRIPTION

The present invention relates to a kitchen furniture with removable back, according to the general part of the claim 1.

In home kitchens, it is common to install furniture for storing, for example, food, drinks, cookware or kitchen utensils in general. For reasons of convenience and space, these pieces of furniture are usually connected to each other and often form a single body, sometimes even presenting similar aesthetic characteristics, thus creating visual harmony within the kitchen. Obviously, the installation of this set of furniture is not easy and often this operation is delegated to experienced technicians who can assemble the furniture precisely. It is also clear that once a piece of furniture has been installed in the kitchen, it will not be easy to move it, precisely because of the couplings with the furniture surrounding it.

Inside the kitchen furniture, there are also various equipments necessary for its functioning, such as those for the supply of methane gas, water or ventilation to eliminate cooking fumes. These equipments usually comprise pipes that run out of the kitchen walls and terminate at devices such as cookers, sinks and hoods, which are able to use these equipments for kitchen operation. It is clear that these devices are usually housed on said kitchen furniture, which is suitably designed for this purpose, and that the pipes required for the functioning thereof are usually positioned behind the furniture, so that they are out of sight and do not create an unsightly appearance.

It is precisely this need to "hide" pipes, electrical panels or, more generally, any service device necessary for the functioning of the kitchen, but not directly employed by the user of the kitchen, that makes it particularly complex to access these devices for maintenance and installation operations, for which it is often necessary for the user of the kitchen to contact a technician skilled in disassembling furniture, who, depending on the way the furniture is arranged, may have to dismantle several parts of the kitchen furniture to free up the space necessary to operate the service devices.

In order to overcome the aforesaid problem, furniture with removable rear walls has been developed in the current state of the art.

For example, a particular solution consists of a parallelepiped-shaped piece of furniture, the rear wall of which has magnets that allow it to be fixed to the rest of the structure by engaging metal plates that protrude from the side walls. In this way, the user can remove the rear wall by simply inserting a finger into a special hole in the wall and pulling it towards him or her to detach the magnets from the plates.

However, this type of detachable coupling has several drawbacks, as it is complex to construct, due to the presence of magnets that must be precisely positioned on the rear wall, and it is not aesthetically pleasing because of the hole that the user utilizes to remove the wall. It should be borne in mind that this type of furniture is usually made of wood and the through hole exposes the unfinished interior of the wall to view. In addition, the magnets are a significant cost that affects the final price of the product. The most important state-of-the-art document is the publication US 2019/166990 Al, which provides (references in brackets relate to said document) a kitchen furniture with removable back (386), substantially parallelepiped in shape, which comprises a pair of side walls (380) integral with a base wall (382) and a rear wall (386) which in turn comprises a rear crosspiece which extends at the top of the side walls (380) and is integral and orthogonal therewith as well as said removable back (386).

Another state-of-the-art document is EP 1003401 Bl.

The main aim of this invention is to produce a kitchen furniture with removable back that is free from the drawbacks of similar products of a known type. This is achieved with a kitchen furniture with removable back equipped with a handle that can engage with a rear support crosspiece. This eliminates the magnets and the through hole of the state-of-the-art solution is no longer present.

In particular, the furniture according to the invention is compliant with the characterizing part of claim 1; some particular embodiments thereof are described in the dependent claims.

The invention will be better defined through the description of a possible embodiment thereof, given solely by way of non-limiting example, with the aid of the attached drawings, wherein:

- fig. 1 represents a perspective view of the furniture referred to in the invention;

- fig. 2 represents a longitudinal sectional view of the furniture referred to in the invention;

- fig. 3 represents an enlargement of the detail of fig. 2 indicated with reference III in the above;

- fig. 4 represents an enlargement of the detail of fig. 3 indicated with reference IV in the above;

- fig. 5 represents a perspective view of the furniture referred to in the invention from the side of the removable back;

- fig. 6 represents a perspective view of a handle present in the furniture referred to in the invention;

- fig. 7 represents a further perspective view of a handle present in the furniture referred to above;

- fig. 8 represents a perspective view of an assembly of furniture referred to in the invention, with enlargements 8.1 and 8.2 illustrating the steps for the removal of the removable back; - figures 8.1 and 8.2 both represent an enlarged view of the assembly of furniture referred to in the invention (ref. VIII), respectively with the removable back in the normally positioned condition and in the tilted condition.

As can be seen in Figs. 1, 2 and 5, the furniture referred to in the invention, indicated overall by reference 1, is substantially parallelepiped in shape and comprises a pair of side walls 2 integral with a base wall 3 and a rear wall 4 consisting of a removable back 6, a rear crosspiece 5 and two side strips 11. The furniture 1 has features appropriately designed to allow the easy removal of the removable back 6, allowing a user to access the space situated behind the furniture. In particular, the removable back 6 has a pair of rotatable handles 8, visible in detail in figs. 6 and 7. Each of these handles has a circular shape and is housed in a through hole obtained on the removable back 6 and retained therein by a circular crown 12 and two pins 13 and 14. Advantageously, the user can rotate the handles 8 by taking advantage of a crosspiece 15 which extends diametrically inside the circular crown 12.

As can be seen in fig. 3, the handles will be fitted into the holes so that the circular crown 12 remains visible to the user, while the pins 13 and 14 will face the back of the furniture. The body of the pin 14 further extends towards the exterior of the handle, producing a coupling projection 9. The latter is adapted to enter and exit, as a result of the rotation of the handle 8, a coupling opening 7 with U-shaped section with concavity facing downwards, obtained at the lower edge of the surface facing the exterior of the furniture of the rear crosspiece 5, and runs longitudinally along the rear crosspiece 5. It is evident that the entry of the coupling projection 9 into the coupling opening 7 generates an obstacle to the forces acting perpendicular to the larger surfaces of the removable back 6. This configuration is visible again in Fig. 3. It is further provided that the base wall 3 has a slot 10 vertically aligned with the rear crosspiece 5 and with a thickness at least equal to that of the removable back 6, as visible in Fig. 4.

In this way, by slipping the removable back 6 into the slot 10 and rotating the handles

8 so that their coupling projections 9 fit into the coupling opening 7, the removable back 6 will be firmly coupled to the furniture 1.

By rotating the handles 8 again, so that their coupling projections 9 exit the coupling opening 7, it will be easy to pull the removable back 6 out of the slot 10 and free up access to the space behind the furniture.

Figs. 8, 8.1 and 8.2 show the steps that allow releasing the removable back 6 by rotation of the handle 8.

From the above it can be seen, therefore, that by using the furniture according to the invention it is possible to solve in a simple way and without the use of complex release systems the problem that consists in being able to remove the back of a furniture in order to allow the user access to the space behind the furniture where there are usually service devices for the functioning of the kitchen furniture.

Obviously, the technical design details and the components used, known in the state of the art and in evolution, can be the most varied, provided that all fall within the inventive concept defined by the following claims.