YesterTec’s  U.L. Listed technology that allows ovens, cooktops, microwaves, warming drawers and any dishwasher to be safely concealed when they are not in use is an industry first! Refrigerators, integrated dishwashers and all the small appliances are concealed in non-rated workstations as well. The U.L safety rating has taken years of research to develop and quite frankly, if we had not been able to meet the stringent U.L rating, we simply would not have released YesterTec at all. We firmly believe that this technology that gives us the ability to safely conceal all of the appliances is key to the success of all of our lines.

How does the technology work?

The ‘hot’ appliances, (specifically built-in ovens, cooktops, microwave ovens and any dishwasher) are concealed by flipper doors when they are not in use. When the flipper doors are closed in front of the appliance, heating power is not supplied to the appliance. By opening the doors and sliding them into pockets alongside the appliance, power is activated when the door mechanism throws a low voltage switch that is connected to our controls. Our testing indicated that this device satisfied the safety requirements for all of the above appliances except for self-cleaning thermal ovens. So for these high temperature ovens, we developed a locking device that locks the flipper doors in the open position until 30 minutes after the appliance has last called for power. This allows the oven’s cooling fans sufficient time to cool the appliance after the heating elements have been turned off. The 30 minute delay also allows ovens that don’t utilize cooling fans (typically non-self-cleaning ovens) to cool naturally to a safe temperature prior to closing the doors.

A testing setup is shown of our Unit Kitchen Control in Underwriter Laboratories of Northbrook, Illinois.

Typically, the technology works with all brands, however, the wooden enclosures that we build are designed to fit certain sizes of appliances, so we need to approve the brand and model of every appliance that is concealed. This is why we typically supply the appliance with the order, because the installation information provided by the appliance manufacturer is generally insufficient to guarantee its compatibility with our enclosures.

For more information on the U.L (Underwriters Laboratories) testing process, see the article: Who says innovation in the cabinet industry is dead?

Recently, we re-designed and tested our new controls that use printed circuit boards (PCBs) and integrated software to power our controls.  Here is an article that digs into how these PCBs are processed for our use.