Minimum Carpentry Protocol (MCP)
Hacking IKEA Furniture
41–50 of 288 posts
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mind immediately went: I’m sure there is some German law or ordinance or regulation against hiding your Gaszähler. This surely goes against die Niederdruckanschlussverordnung. Now that you have published this online, police will visit you to remove the Billy! Perhaps I am too pessimistic with German laws. PS: It looks much better this way.
As long as you can easily slide it out of the way and it isn't fixed to the wall, it wouldn't be a problem for anyone who needs to service it. Therefore, it would not be against regulations, because all regulations in Germany are logical
Good to know! It slides in/out like a puzzle, so should be fine then.
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#43I was thinking along the lines of Ikea-style furniture from scratch. Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements. How cool would it be if they offered a simplified furniture CAD program, where you could choose what material you need how many shelves of what size, etc and it would generate the needed program that would drill the requ…
> Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements. Do you mean local woodshop? CNCs that fit a full sheet-good are very large and expensive and not at your typical hardware store. Especially once they can load and unload, change bits. Sheet-good sized CNC's are mostly for batch jobs do not really make sense economically for one off desi…
In Europe a CNC, or at least good and repeatable saw is available at large hardware stores. You can get any product cut to any shape precisely as long as it's a rectangle. I've not noticed one that offers more than this such as drilling holes.
But even if you were to get the wood cut and prepared perfectly, there's still a lot of skill to turn that into nice desk for example, with good joinery, veneer on exposed end grain, etc and a lot that can go wrong, and you are likely to end up with a worse result than a mass produced desk for a much higher price. This type of manufacturing can't compete at all with the cost optimizations that Ikea can do. So where you see B2C in this space is built-in furniture like for kitchens. This has a limited design space so a lot of the parts are standardized, and the design can be constrained to not have the end user work on details like exposed end grain. I guess this doesn't really have an alternative mass-produced option, so the price comparison is to hiring a contractor, so it makes sense as an offering.
But it's evidently hard to get right. If you go to an Ikea that sells returned goods, that section is filled with kitchen countertops cut to the wrong length (good source of cheap wood for projects by the way).
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#44Build more real stuff, everyone.
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#45Whenever I looked at using IKEA stuff to hack or incorporate into a larger build, the cost, effort, and quality never seemed worth it to me.
I built my current desk from some butcher block counter tops and shelfs and 4x4's. I don't think it cost me all that much more from what I could have done from IKEA and the quality is astronomically better.
If you're already dealing with saws and drills to hack the IKEA stuff, you really only need to toss is a sander and maybe a router and you can just work with real wood.
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#46[flagged]
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#47There are tons of websites like this: https://ikeahackers.net/ I read, IKEA first wanted to have them closed down, but then they realized, it does not matter why someone buys their stuff, as long as they buy it. I like Ikea. I lived in so many countries, and it is an excellent place to buy furniture if you have to. But I consider it "throw away" furniture. Quality is okay or soso and it is unlikely to survive several…
> it is unlikely to survive several moves
I have several pieces that have survived 3-4 moves. The trick is when assembling, use wood glue with any dowels. On their own, these dowels only have friction to hold them in place, and over time, the surface of the area where they are inserted compresses, reducing friction. Hence you get that typical side to side sway. The glue mitigates this problem.
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#48For functional sturdy furniture like this, if you are OK with the look, you can make the base/frame from aluminium 80/20 extrusions (the kind with t-slots and all kinds of standard brackets etc for fastening them together). Misumi has a simple CAD interface to design a complete unit, and this generates a single part number for you to purchase everything cut to length, with holes if needed, and all required accessories and fasteners to assemble it. You can easily add a wooden countertop or shelves if desired.
It's not very cheap but it's infinitely configurable (unlike Ikea hacks) and doesn't require much skill (unlike building from wood at least if you want it to look OK).
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#49Whenever I looked at using IKEA stuff to hack or incorporate into a larger build, the cost, effort, and quality never seemed worth it to me. I built my current desk from some butcher block counter tops and shelfs and 4x4's. I don't think it cost me all that much more from what I could have done from IKEA and the quality is astronomically better. If you're already dealing with saws and drills to hack the IKEA stuff, y…
A butcher block desk with 4x4s for legs is pretty simple and forgiving. Matching the quality of appearance of a lot of other IKEA furniture would require quite a bit more skill and tools.
Like a Kallax, unless you're a real wizard you couldn't cobble one of those together without a lot of skill.
Re: Hacking IKEA Furniture
#50I was thinking along the lines of Ikea-style furniture from scratch. Most local hardware stores carry these giant CNC routers, and the technicians there can cut particle board sheets to requirements. How cool would it be if they offered a simplified furniture CAD program, where you could choose what material you need how many shelves of what size, etc and it would generate the needed program that would drill the requ…
I've long been considering this idea as I make a lot of my own cabinetry, and would love to get automated cutting and drilling lists depending on if I'll use screws or dowel pins or some nice wooden joints.
In general, you always start with outside dimensions, board thickness, having a kick plate or not (eg. when you make it wheeled), will you chamfer/round the edges and then the rest is simple calculation. You add internal shelve/drawer dimensions and it can consider those too.
I had some scripts that worked with an older version of FreeCAD and printed the cutting list to a CSV, but it still was not the perfect solution.
Interestingly, local chipboard/MDF shops here in Serbia would do that as a service for you on their CNC machines (at additional cost, obviously :)).