Hi, I am a member of a local voluntary group of mostly engineers who design and produce and donate specialist one-off mobility aids for the elderly and disabled. They have just been asked about modifications to a domestic, electrical oven - so they naturally passed it to the female electrical engineer in the group...
Basically, what is needed is for the two shelves of the oven to be capable of sliding out their full length, whilst supporting the weight of what may be a large turkey, without sagging and with nothing normally protruding beyond the normal mechanical envelope of the oven.
I can't think of what electrical engineer has to do with this - hence the OT - but any thoughts on solutions, no matter how off the wall, would be welcome. There are clearly some very bright cookies lurking around this group...
My present thought is to put wheels on the sliding trays and run them on tracks fitted into the oven and with extension tracks that can be clipped on by the user when the oven door is open. By mounting the front of the permanent track on an offset bracket, the load pushing it down and hence slightly forward would be translated by a lever into offsetting the rear track bracket, to move the rear of the track forward and slightly more lower. A small spring would pull it back to the normal position when unloaded. Thus, as the tray slides out so that its entire weight and leverage is applied to the front bracket, the rear bracket will pull the back of the rail lower - thus producing a slightly uphill gradient for the tray, which will get even more uphill the more weight on the tray. This should be enough to counter the bending (non-permament) of the extended rail with the applied weight.
Any alternative thoughts, or suggestions of more appropriate groups?
I had thought of using the ball-bearing heavy-weight drawer slides from surplus electronic equipment racks - but somehow don't think that they would cope with the conditions in a cooker..They do do wonders for drawers in kitchen cupboards though..
Many thanks,
Sue