Avid readers of our monthly newsletter will have gathered last month that along with complex motion control mechanisms Sugatsune produce a huge range of “standard but special” products for a wide variety of markets. Each one of which performs excellently but has some aspect of design or manufacture that makes it remarkable.
A better standard for shelves
Shelf standards are vertical metal strips or tracks with holes in them to which brackets are fixed to support shelves. The idea is flexible and brilliant but it takes a company like Sugatsune to make the implementation shine. Rather than ugly lumpen steel strips the AP-DM is made from a tough aluminium alloy and is incredibly sleek at only 3mm depth. The brackets used are also ultra slim maximising the use of space on the shelf. They snap positively into uniquely shaped holes that hold the brackets securely in place. The strips can be surface mounted or morticed and in both cases give a smart inobtrusive shelving system with a 45kg load capacity. The AP-DM is used in high quality joinery and retail displays where style and function both matter.
A new niche for soft-down stays
As the inventor of the soft-down stay it’s not surprising that Sugatsune revisits the concept periodically. Customers who wanted to house technical equipment in domestic cabinetry found that there was no way of dampening the small flap doors they were using. Sugatsune reinvented the SDS soft-down stay for smaller doors so that Xboxes and DVD players could disappear when not in use. It’s called the SDS-100TV Short Arm Soft-down Stay and has become the new standard for audio visual equipment housing.
A bigger stronger concealed hinge
Cabinet doors are not only getting smaller, they’re getting bigger too. Concealed hinges are easy to install and function well but they were conceived for cabinet doors no more than 600mm wide and 800mm high. What happens if you have a double height door such as you’d expect in a wardrobe? Very often the fitter optimistically attaches up to five hinges. Despite being ugly it works.. for a while. Then the top hinge, stressed beyond it’s specification fails leading to general wobbliness and horror. The J95 Concealed hinge is not a revolutionary concept, it’s just bigger and stronger. It was developed from hinges used in Japanese Pachinko gaming machines where the cabinet doors are roughly used by those collecting the cash and are regularly removed to refresh the machinery inside.
The J95 can support a door 800mm wide weighing up to 25kgs. It has a 40mm cup where the standard is 35mm and the mounting plate has four screws making it very stable.
Sugatsune’s range of “standard but special” products extends beyond the furniture market so next month we’ll take a look at the industrial market and how Sugatsune products make a difference by being distinctive.
