Keeping their cool: How Sears tests appliances

Pity the refrigerator that aspires to wear the Kenmore label.

Fitted with sensors to measure whether temperatures remain steady throughout its cavities and looking like a heart-attack victim, it moves into a torture chamber.

Chicago's climate should be enough to test man and machine, but Sears sells major appliances throughout the country with its various temperatures and humidities.

The refrigerator is put through its paces in a room where temperatures swing from very cold to 90 degrees. And the humidity reaches heights that remind engineers of summer in Miami.

Of course the refrigerator has to continue making ice and dispensing water. And no sweating allowed. Condensation is bad, although the engineers agree wine refrigerators and others with glass doors are going to perspire.

Sears recently invited reporters in for a rare look at the 30,000-square-foot laboratory in the corporation's Hoffman Estates headquarters. The lab develops and improves products while testing protects a reputation earned through 95 years of selling the Kenmore brand.

At least part of the trial for appliances like air conditioners, dehumidifiers and vacuum cleaners is more like a vacation. That's the visit to an anechoic chamber, a room lined with foam cones to create complete silence.

This is where engineers measure how much noise appliances are putting off, and what parts are causing it so they can figure how to reduce it, said Tom DeSalvo, director of product development for Kenmore.

Just as important is the nature of the sound.

"Of the various frequencies, some are much more annoying than others," he said.

Washing machines have not only sound to worry about but vibration as well, especially these days when they are as likely to hang out in the bedroom wing as the basement. Again, sensors hooked to computers are connected to a washing machine and its platform, which mimics a floor that just meets code.

The quest here is to develop industry specifications for washing machine vibration. And to find ways to reduce the shakes with techniques such as redistributing the load before the high-spin cycles.

Oh, yes, engineers also test for stain removal.

Perhaps engineers have the most fun testing ovens and cooktops.

Weighty questions here include how does an oven perform baking two racks of cookies, and does the AirGuard feature really keep odors from permeating a home even when a pizza is cremated for more than an hour?

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