Switch and timing mechanism for appliances

Claim 1

A cooking appliance including: a cooking surface; means for heating said surface; a temperature responsive switch means adjacent said surface; on-off switch means for automatically timing the duration of a cooking operation, said temperature responsive switch and said timing switch serially connected to said heater; means for mounting said heating means generally adjacent said cooking surface and including means movable with said heating means in response to expansion and contraction of said heating means; said on-off timing switch means including, first and second resilient contact arms; cam means rotatively mounted abutting said first arm to control the closing of said first and second contact arms; ratchet means operatively connected to said cam means to incrementally rotate said cam means; and pawl means mounted on said movable means to engage said ratchet means and rotate said cam in response to a cycle of expansion and contraction of said heating means whereby the relative initial angular displacement of said cam means with respect to said first arm determines the number of cycles of expansion and contraction required to rotate said cam to a position at which said on-off timing switch is off thereby timing the duration of the cooking cycle.