This is a Motorized Remote Control Hidden Kitchen Appliance Lift, built using an existing cabinet, it was just modified to lift the bottom down 12- Inches thereby increasing the size of any counter space and also hiding away unsightly kitchen equipment. The same application can be used for a Drop Down TV lift or anything else.
Here is a list of the parts used for this project
1. 12" stroke linear actuator https://www.firgelliauto.com/products/deluxe-rod-actuator
2. MB3 bracket to hold the actuator body in place https://www.firgelliauto.com/products/mb3
3. MB3U bracket to act as a pulley for the cable https://www.firgelliauto.com/products/mb3u
4. one pair of 18 inch stroke drawer slides https://www.firgelliauto.com/collections/drawer-slides
4. 12vdc power supply or battery https://www.firgelliauto.com/products/dc-power-adaptor
5. remote control system. comes with 2 wireless RF remotes https://www.firgelliauto.com/products/two-channel-remote-control-system
6. Pulley cable. https://www.firgelliauto.com/products/pulley-lifting-cables-for-linear-actuators
The purpose of this project is to hide away some kitchen appliances, and at the touch of a button have them drop down into use. In this case they drop into use over the sink, this can be a good location because you are very unlikely to have anything tall sat in the sink that can obstruct the lift from dropping down.
The bottom of the cabinet is what drops down into use, the base of the cabinet is held in place using drawer slides. The Firgelli drawer slides are a little more heavy duty than your average kitchen drawer slides because they are meant for much higher loads. In this project the Drawer slides were placed at the back of the cabinet, the idea is that they would eventually be covered with a fake backing that slides up and down with the cabinet so that you cannot even see the drawer slides.
Another option is to place the drawer slides at the side of the base so that they attach to each side of the cabinets on each side. This would make the entire drop down cabinet much stronger, but doesn't look as good once the cabinet base is dropped because then you would see the drawer slides once in the down position.
Remember it is important to use longer extending drawer slides than the stroke of the actuator that you will use. In this example the customer wanted to drop the cabinet down 12-inches so we chose the 18-Inch extension drawer slides. Having the extra available stroke in the drawer slides makes installation far easier to deal with. Read our blog post here on drawer slides to understand how to size them correctly
The lifting work is all done using the 12-inch stroke linear actuator, connected to a two channel remote control system. This remote system has 2 buttons for up and down and is incredibly easy to wire up together. Watch this video here to see how that is done
Notice the Linear Actuator is placed horizontally but the cabinet lifts vertically. The Firgelli Pulley cable kit is used to connect the actuator to the top of the cabinet drawer slides. The Actuator does the puling work and gravity pulls the cabinet down when the actuator is extended allowing the cabinet to drop down under tension from the pulley cable. The Cable kit come with the cable clamps for both ends of the cable. this is how you adjust the positioning of the starting point of the cabinet. You want the actuator to be fully retracted when the cabinet is in its fully up position.
The same application and installation process can be used to make a drop down TV lift instead. Here is a separate Blog post on how to do that.
