Fly In The Pudding?

The fly in the pudding for cabinets has to do with accumulated tolerance. This little fly can find his beginnings with just one poorly trained, disgruntled or apathetic employee in the shop and will cause problems for everyone else in the shop on down to the end user, the homeowner. In most cases the cabinet dealer selling the cabinets to the homeowner ends up being the one who deals with this pesky little fly.Accumulated tolerance is an engineering term related to the accumulated variation, plus or minus, of a specific dimension of a machined part. When the parts are integrated to form an assembly the clearance or interference of all the machined parts is critical to the function of the assembly. If I lost you with that definition, believe me, I understand. Actually it's not hard to understand if I use a cabinet drawer box as an example The width of a cabinet drawer box must be a specific width in relation to the opening in a cabinet for the drawer to open and close properly. Most side mount drawer guides allow up to 1/8th inch of variance in the width of the box and will still work properly. Problems occurs is when the drawer box front and back pieces, which determine the box width, are cut either too short or too long to fall within this 1/8th inch tolerance making the drawer either bind in operation or be so loose in the cabinet opening it runs out of the drawer guide tracts. Just about all cabinet manufacturers have a problem maintaining the proper accumulated tolerance of their drawer boxes from time to time. Problems with accumulated tolerance aren't limited to just drawer boxes. A cabinet is assembled using many parts either cut or machined to very exacting dimensions. If the variation of a specific dimension of one or more parts falls outside of the acceptable accumulated tolerance then problems can occur with any of the other components of the cabinet upon assembly. Another example of this problem is the adjustable shelf. Have you ever tried to adjust the shelves in your wall cabinets and found they were so tight you couldn't move them? The length of the shelf may have been too long or it may be another component in the cabinet was cut too short not allowing enough room for the shelf to easily be installed in the cabinet so it was forced into the cabinet at the assembly stage rather than stopping production to alert a shop manager there is a problem. Many cabinet shops rely on regular meetings with all shop workers to discuss problems in the shop. Depending on how large the production volume is, if those meetings are only held once a week then it's possible for hundreds if not thousands of cabinets to have a problem before anyone is alerted. Unfortunately most manufacturers never to admit they have this problem and very rarely if ever cover the service cost of repairing the problem. This service cost is usually placed on the dealer who sold the cabinets to the homeowner. In many instances the homeowner will blame the dealer for the problem not knowing it's a manufacturing error. Addressing these problems before the homeowner moves in is essential to the reputation of the dealer who sold the cabinets. Attention to detail is what separates the good dealer from the bad ones and insures a successful business.
Contributor-Fred Lloyd -(known around here as Mr. Picky)
Longhorn Cabinets Inc. Prescott Valley AZ 86333