Norseman said:
[...] noticed that the holes on these cabinets are drilled 27mm from the front. Is this a special IKEA feature? ???
Measuring our old ikea cabinets, I got 28mm setback of the hole row. Due to manufacturing tolerances, there is some variation. 28mm is consistent with Blum and Hettich drawer runners, which have an extra hole 9mm in front of the "standard" 37mm setback hole, which means that one can probably put an appropriate Blum or Hettich drawer in an ikea cabinet without drilling too much. So I've been looking at Blum process 32 and Hettich system 32 and their drawer rails trying to figure where the Ikea 32mm system comes from. Also looked at the other 32mm systems mentioned by others here (KISS, True 32, etc). All of the "systems" look seriously flawed in various ways. What a dog's breakfast.
The main flaw of the Ikea system is that one can't put an internal drawer at the bottom of a cabinet with a hinged door, because the door hinge uses the bottom two holes. The second problem is the design with a tall plinth 160mm, wasting space. I guess that allows for a shorter plinth in markets where the people are shorter. They do make an under cabinet drawer now.
For my limited needs, Ikea hinges and drawer runners are a whole lot cheaper than Blum ones for equivalent quality and will keep me mostly happy. The extra depth of the standard Ikea 600mm deep module gains bench and drawer space missing from most custom kitchens I have seen. Obviously, there is not the product range of Blum (or others). Presumably Blum likes there to be certain incompatibility of their products with their Ikea OEM product. I have been looking to see if a system would be compatible with Ikea and others. I am repeatedly annoyed that local custom cabinet makers seem to like to hang all drawer fronts the same as the bottom one which has to cover the cabinet base. This KISS method (all drawers are made on the same template) wastes 16mm of usable drawer height for every drawer apart from the bottom one.
So the parameters I want for a simple and efficient cabinet system, accounting for Murphy's law:
1. Cabinets with sides reversible top to bottom, indexed from front. Automatically, doors would also be reversible left to right with a 180deg rotation.
2. Minimum clearance for bottom drawer runner as part of the system.
Optionally for cost efficiency:
3. Use an Ikea drawer runner if it suits.
4. Fit an Ikea door or drawer front if desired
5. Make a custom fronts for ikea cabinets
Ikea drawer runners appear to be designed for its 32mm system with 28mm from floor of cabinet to first hole. Drawer mount holes are +300mm and rear shelf pin +525mm from the front hole. Ikea cabinets look to have 46.5mm from end of side panel to second hole presumably based on Blum Process 32.
Blum drawer runners mostly are designed for 33mm minimum clearance from floor of cabinet to first hole. Second hole row is mostly 256 from first and despite loads of extra hole "columns", there are none that are 300mm apart. Crazily, the Blum Process 32 document shows "out of system" holes for the bottom drawer, since Process 32 has 27.5mm clear below first hole. So why bother with Blum and Process 32 at all?
Hettich drawer runners look all different without apparent system in mind for mounting the bottom drawer. Odd since Hettich is attributed with invention of the 32mm system (according to the German version of Wikipedia). The main kitchen drawer runners need 37 and 42mm clearance below the mount hole, but have an extra row of holes 12mm lower than those, so 25 and 30mm is good. System 32's lowest 2 holes are 22.5 and 54.5mm clear of the cabinet base, so Hettich drawer runners don't work in the Hettich system either, without wasting 12.5mm. As with Blum, loads of extra holes with the 2 rows in multiple columns, but none at 300mm either.
Grass drawer runners need 49.5mm clearance. Will do 28 and 37mm setback front hole. Nearest to 300mm is Grass standard 288+9=297mm. Looks not really designed for a system as the GRASS Nova Pro drilling pattern looks rather random.
Looks like I will stick to mostly "Ikea system 32" (28mm hole setback, 46.5mm from end to first hole) and Ikea hardware. For extra flexibility, I can use Hettich drawer runners (25mm clearance works with 28 available). Suggest the second row 265mm (256+9) from the first, as opposed to the unique Ikea 300mm.
LR32 looks designed for Hettich system 32 with 41.5mm = LR32+9.5guide stop. The 16 and 32mm guide stops aren't quite any system I have found.
Can do Ikea/Blum system 32 holes with LR32+16guide stop+1.5mm pack on the guide stop end. With the carcass butt join the other way around, can do LR32+32guide+4mm pack on the guide stop end to get 28mm. I guess that way leaves room for error if the base is not 100% square to the side when assembled.
For a fully commercial hardware system the Blum Process 32 hole spacing should work properly with the Hettich drawer runners! The Ikea drawer front dimensions avoid the messy unaligned drawer gaps problem. If a taller base cabinet is desired, making the bottom drawer taller will retain the tidy system drawer look.