1st, WE NEED A MOLD
Our under cabinet sliding shelves are made from large steel/aluminum molds. They are roughly 6” larger in every dimension than the drawer itself. The molds for sliding shelves are made with the aid of a CAD (computer-aided-design) system. This is basically, a computer that is loaded with our under cabinet drawers blueprints and it directs another machine to carve our mold from a solid block of steel/aluminum.
The whole process is controlled by a highly trained CAD technician. The cost of each under cabinet sliding shelves mold is significant. It costs roughly the price of a new car. Roll out Kitchen Drawers pays for the mold before we sell a single drawer. Should we guess wrong on the potential sales, we will never recover our investment cost. So we plan carefully to meet both our business and customer needs.
(See one of our molds behind the blue pallet jack in the picture to the right)
NEXT WE NEED AN INJECTION MACHINE
So, how are the molds used to make the plastic drawer you see on our website?
Answer. We give the molds to a Contractor who owns enormous manufacturing machines that the molds can be put into. Our current Contractor is Titan Manufacturing out of Port Coquitlam, BC. This is a suburb of Vancouver, BC. Titan buys large boxes of plastic pellets and each box of pellets can make roughly 500 drawers.
(Notice the man beside the injection machine in the picture to the right)
The pellets are fed into a large hopper (funnel) that feeds the pellets into an injection machine where they are heated to the melting point. The injection machine forces the molten plastic into the mold at 400-600 tons of pressure to ensure the molten plastic gets into the smallest little nook and cranny of the mold. This process takes about a minute. The mold is then opened and hot new under cabinet sliding shelf drawer pops out. The mold closes and the process repeats.
After the hot under cabinet drawer pops out, it is placed on a cooling form for a few minutes that holds the drawer shape to ensure no deformity while cooling. Obviously this is not for one of a kind or small runs. When we re-stock a size, we usually run about 500 under cabinet sliding shelves of that size.
(Here is a picture of one of the molds being placed in an injection machine by the blue fork lift).
After cooling, the under cabinet drawers are crated and shipped to our warehouse in Blaine WA, where they are assembled. Steel cross-support and rails are added to the drawers. The outer rails are attached to the base member. Here is an example image of the pre-assembled sliding shelf.
After assembly, the sliding shelves are boxed for shipment. We usually ship 2 drawers of the same to a box as this completes a kitchen base cabinet position. But we also box some drawers individually to service uneven number orders. Our shipper will usually have roughly 50 of a size pre-boxed and ready for shipment in inventory at any given time.
That, in short, is how our under cabinet sliding shelves are made, and sitting in inventory, ready to ship to you. Learn how to measure for a sliding shelves now. Learn about dimensions for sliding trays.
Contact Roll out Kitchen Drawers with your questions.