The present invention refers to a clothes washing machine, in particular a household-type clothes washing machine, provided with special means and related operating modes to enable the particular type of textiles, or mix thereof, forming the washload in the drum of said washing machine to be appropriately identified.
Although the present invention relates particularly to front-loading clothes washing machines, and for reasons of greater simplicity and convenience the following description refers to such a type of washing machines, it will be appreciated that the invention may similarly apply to other types of washing machines, such as top-loading washing machines.
Washing machines are known in the art that are provided with means adapted to identify the type of textiles, or mix thereof, forming the particular washload being handled in the drum of the washing machine. A purpose of such identification is to provide the machine with the ability of selecting the washing cycle automatically, with the various process parameters selected so as to optimize the operation of the machine and the washing results. For instance, the U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,393 to the name of General Electric Company discloses a quite effective method for identifying the type of textiles in the washload. However, such a method only applies to washing machines having their drum rotating about a vertical axis, so that it is not suitable for use in conjunction with the great majority of washing machines having their drum rotating about a horizontal axis, that is, nearly all of the European-built machines. Furthermore, such a method is a sort of a trial-and-error one based on a set of successive measurements, so that it is quite complex and time-consuming.