February 15, 2024
Description
I needed an adjustable spacer to fasten undermount drawer slides to kitchen cabinet boxes (those with face frames rather than European-style boxes). The slides attach to the face frames well enough, but they need a spacer to fill the gap between the slides and the side of the cabinet boxes so they can attach to the rear of the cabinet. I could have made spacers from a block of wood, but not all the cabinet frames are square, so they would need to be different depths to account for any out-of-squareness of the cabinet boxes and still keep the drawer slides parallel. To accomplish this, I made a cylindrical spacer that is approximately 38mm wide, and its depth can be adjusted by rotating the two halves of the spacer about each other. The spacer I made adjusted from 19mm (just under ¾ inch U.S.) to 23.5mm (just over 7/8 inch U.S.) in 1.5mm increments (about 1/16 inch). They don't require any hardware to adjust, simply unsnap the sides and align the star indicator with one of the indication dots on the other piece. The star aligned with the first dot will be 19mm, the star aligned with 2 dots is 20.5mm, the star aligned with three dots is 22mm and the star aligned with four dots is 23.5mm.
I've included the .skp SketchUp file as well as the .stl files for anyone who would like to edit the spacer for their specific needs.
Print Settings:
-Layer heigh of .2mm
-3 perimeters
-50% infill (for compressive strength)
-printed in a recycled PLA, but any filament would likely be fine. If the tolerances are too tight for the pieces to mate, perhaps scaling the female or male piece could help.
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution
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