Process 32: Metabox Drawers
Not to be confused with Blum's "Process 32: Universal Boring Pattern". This is an old (...and slightly flawed) review of Blum's older "Process 32: Design Guide for Metabox Drawers"
At first glance "Process 32: Design Guide for Metabox Drawers" is a pretty impressive 60+ page manual. It provides a plethora of potentially useful drawings and information. Unfortunately, while it comes close, it doesn't follow 2 basic standards of the 32mm system. The result is a manual/system that complicates cabinet design and construction.
In the 32mm system all door/drawer faces are an increment of 32mm, less reveal, and center between system holes. The manual is inconsistent with increments of 32 less nothing, less 1/2 reveal and less reveal. The manual also shows faces that are some increment of 32 plus a half increment (16mm). We could clean things up quite a bit by following the system and making all our doors/drawers some increment of 32mm (less reveal). We still have problems.
First lets take a look at panels. The manual uses panels that are even increments of 32mm with first system holes at 64mm from top and bottom. This is a balanced panel and we will leave it alone for now. We are also going to ignore reveals as they will have no effect on the second standard the manual/system breaks.
Using the system all drawer boxes and faces index equally. In other words all drawer faces are in the same relative position to the drawer boxes. The manual cannot do this with a panel that is an even increment of 32mm. Looking at Figure 1 (based on Blum Metabox minimum clearances) we see that the bottom drawer must be indexed 32mm different from the rest. You may also notice that 19mm material will not work if drawer rails are used (16mm will). We can mess around with configurations but we will not gain any ground.
When I first wrote about the Process 32 manual I got some flak for writing about a system that doesn't follow 32mm standards. In the process I learned about having drawer edges centering on or between system holes (thanks to Keith Hill and Bob Buckley). If we use a panel where the edges land between system holes, our Metabox drawers and faces can index equally. In Figure 2 we can see what happens.
I have not been able to look at Dynaplan which is a computer layout tool for Metabox so I do not know if it suffers the same drawbacks as the Process 32 manual. I think Process 32 is out of print and perhaps Blum will come out with a manual that simplifies layout/construction by following 32mm standards.
If you like things nice and simple that's all folks. If you have been following my other pages and wonder how this fits in, and don't mind a headache, read on.
I have always used system holes (or grid) for construction and seldom build full overlay cabinets. For me, having edges land between system holes is tweaking the system. I come to this with the perception that the system has to be messed with somewhere when we want to build full overlay cabinets. I am currently aware of 4 options.
- The first is called the "B rule". In this option we add a given amount to the bottom of all faces that overlay the bottom of the cabinet. If using system holes for construction (19mm material, 3mm reveal and system indexed drawers) we need to add 11mm to our bottom faces to get the full overlay style of cabinets. This causes special treatment for bottom drawers and unbalances door hinge cup spacing. I got the name "B rule" from a Blum pamphlet titled "The Pearls". Blum does not use system holes and calls for adding 14mm to allow Metabox clearance on the bottom drawer.
- The second option is the face shift. All faces are shifted the necessary amount to create a full overlay on the bottom of the cabinet. This unbalances hinge cup boring. If using center drawer face to box registration the boxes will have to be 22mm smaller (2x the shift).
- The third option is the construction hole shift. The cabinet bottom is moved up enough to create a full overlay on the bottom of the cabinet. What happens here is we are getting in the way of the drawer box bottom and (in most cases) have to move our drawer box up 32mm. Now we have bottom drawers that use different box to face registration. We do have balanced hinge cups with this option. This is the "edges on system holes" referred to above.
- The final option is a combination of the second and third options. We are doing a 16mm face shift and 16mm construction hole shift. We are also adjusting the bottom construction hole shift to create a full overlay on the bottom of the cabinet box. We have balanced hinge cups and our drawer box to face registrations are all the same. Our faces now line up halfway between system holes. This one is new to me. This doesn't appear to cause any major problems. It may cause an inconvenience in some specialized hardware installations. This is the "edges between system holes" referred to above.
