Oh, patents! OXO® salad spinner brake

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Do you have an OXO® salad spinner to dry lettuce or other sorts of leafy vegetables that you have just washed? An OXO® salad spinner equipped with a plunger that you use to actuate the spinning, so that the rotational force of the basket will separate the water from the leafy vegetables to dry them. Do you use the small button on one side of the plunger to stop the salad spinner from spinning?   

This small button, on one side of the plunger, is an OXO® patented brake mechanism designed to interrupt the spinning, so that you can remove the contents of the salad spinner without having to wait until the spinning stops, or otherwise having to open the spinner to manually to stop the inside basket from spinning.

The OXO® salad spinner brake mechanism is recited in a family of 10 patents that includes the US patent US8539693 (B2), titled Brake mechanism for a device for drying foods and other items, and the PCT patent  WO2012134694 (A1) with the same title.

The invention recited comprises a button, actuating a brake caliper mechanism, accommodated inside the spinner’s cover, cooperating with the lid of the salad basket, inside the spinner. When the button is pressed on the cover of the spinner, the brake’s two calipers (designated 'pinching arms') clamp down on the spinning annular ridge of the lid of the salad basket. Since the lid is engaged with the rotating basket, actuation of the calipers that clamp onto the lid, also effectively stops the basket from spinning.  

The abstract of the OXO® salad spinner brake invention is included below, together with the patent drawings Figures 1 and 6. 

Figure 1 shows a salad spinner 20B of the prior art, where the inventive brake mechanism 300 is accommodated inside the cover 24A of the salad spinner 20B.  Figure 6 shows a detailed cross-sectional view of the button-actuated brake mechanism 400, depressed in braking position, with the clamping arm assembly (calipers) 440, clamped down on the outer edges 496 and 498 of the spinning ridge 494 of the salad basket lid 28B. 

An OXO® manufacturer’s video of the salad spinner in action is also included above.

A brake assembly for reducing the rotational velocity the spinning basket of a food spinning device applies a frictional force to an annular ridge on the lid of the spinning basket. A brake button movably disposed in a cover of the spinning device includes flexible pinching arms having cam surfaces. The cam surfaces of the flexible pinching arms extend through a guide aperture, thereby causing the pinching arms to flex toward each other when the brake button is depressed and to apply the frictional engagement to the annular ridge. [Abstract US8539693 (B2)]

Reference
OXO website
www.oxo.com