hi,
i’ve seen some drawers that are pretty cool. When you give it push, it closes, but as it reaches the edge, it slows down and closes very gently. there are no motors or anything, so any ideas as to how it works?
They are Blumotion. Common in higher end cabinets. It’s all done with springs.
You may have seen some that were even more sophisticated, but the ones I have seen simply follow a curved track. When open, the back roller on the track is on a flat piece so that it stays opn. If you nudge it, the roller is pushed back onto a slanting section where gravity pulls it down and back, but near the back, the rail curves up again so that the drawer begins to slow. At the very back the roller falls into a slight trough, holding the drawer still.
I suppose that more elaborate designs could employ hydraulic pistons or magnets to do the same thing. (I don’t spend a lot of time among kitchen cabinets, so it is also possible that my example could actually be the rarest method.)
Springs is good.
I’ve not inspected the mechanism in question, but damping fluid is often used to slow down the action of spring-loaded mechanisms. The most common example is the cassette doors of tape decks, lids on portable CD players and other lids/doors that seem to “ooze” open when you hit the release button.
Here’s a picture of a dampening gear. The damping fluid is applied under the gear (not on the teeth), giving it a “sluggish” rotation.
