The kitchen is the place where you spend a lot of time. There, your family prepares food and eats. It is also a place that demands a lot of effort, for the same reason. That’s why it is normal if you want to have as many devices as you can to facilitate the everyday kitchen routine. However, in most cases, a standard kitchen doesn’t allow you to accommodate everything you would like to have there, due to the lack of space.
What Can You Do Then?
The solution is in automation. There are many automated devices that can turn your kitchen into a functional place with sufficient space for everybody. If you cannot purchase automated solutions, you can build them. Here, we offer some ideas on how to use electric linear motion to automate your kitchen and make it even more functional.
Lifting Columns Help to Accommodate Any Devices
What about building a functional lifting platform in one of the kitchen cabinets? To make it, you need a powerful lifting column (the one that can lift and lower safely the device you want to install) and a platform. Once you have the items, you can start building the lifting platform:
- Install the lifting column in one of the kitchen cabinets. The moving part shall have a stroke length sufficient to reach the cabinet top.
- In the cabinet top, make an opening. Its size shall be enough to make the device that you want to install pass. The cut out part can be used for a platform.
- Now, use the cut out part as a platform on which the device will be installed. If you prefer, you can also make a different platform or order one.
- Fix the platform to the moving part of the lifting column.
- Install and fix the device on the platform.
- Make and fix a cap for the opening. When the column hides the device, the opening is closed with a cap, and you can use the cabinet surface as usual.
Now, when the lifting column is in a retracted position, it hides the device in the cabinet. In an extended position, the lifting column moves the platform with the fixed device to the cabinet top. You can use the device as you do normally, clean it, and move it back in the cabinet with a single push of a button.
How many such moving platforms do you need? It depends on you only. You can install as many of them as you want.
Drop-Down Racks Keep in Order Smaller Items
Another useful invention is a drop-down rack. You can use any rack you have in the kitchen or purchase a usual rack. Another item you would need is a linear electric actuator. It shall be powerful enough to lift and lower the rack with the items stored there. It shall also have a stroke length sufficient to lower the rack at a level comfortable for you to use the things stored there, and to hide it either behind a wall-mounted kitchen rack or inside of it.
Now, when all the items are available, you can move on with installing your drop-down rack. First, decide whether you want to have it behind a kitchen cabinet, right beneath it, or inside. If it is meant to be hidden behind the cabinet, fix the cabinet in a way to allow the rack to pass between the cabinet wall and a kitchen wall. It might not be too convenient though in the long term. So, we check how to make a kitchen rack in the cabinet which is the most practical solution.
In a wall-mounted kitchen cabinet bottom, make an opening. It shall be big enough to make the actuator pass if you want to lift the rack beneath the kitchen cabinet. If you want the rack to be completely hidden, the opening shall be big enough to make the entire rack pass.
Now, on the back wall of the kitchen cabinet, fix the actuator.
Fix the rack to the moving actuator side. Test whether it works as expected. Once done, you can arrange all the needed items there and start using them. Check them out here.
A Lift Table Is not Only for the Office
Now, it is the turn of your dining table. While it is not mandatory, we believe that this idea will be welcomed by all the kids in the house. Also, it will make the use of a usual dining table more comfortable.
We are talking about remaking your ordinary table into a height-adjustable one. To build one, you don’t even have to buy all the items. Remove the desktop of your traditional table, buy a lift system, and fix the desk top on the lift system. That`s it, your new height-adjustable table is ready. You can prepare nice meals for your smallest ones and their friends, and we bet they will be amazed to see that the table can be adjusted to their size.
Some Words to Wrap up
Along with kitchen improvement, you can build many interesting automation projects in all rooms of your home. Linear actuators and the items that are in use already are the only needed materials for any automation project.
A TV lift can be installed in your favorite cabinet. Use it to impress your friends and relatives and to keep your expensive item protected.
Space below your bed can be turned into a convenient and spacious storage room. Make a box to keep things there. Fix actuators so that they lift and lower the bed frame, and enjoy additional storage space.
What else can be automated? The truth is that you can automate your home completely if you have some skills, knowledge, and can research. Check what projects have been already implemented. Usually, it is easy to find step-by-step descriptions for every project. Use those guides to gain some experience and to learn from their mistakes.
Now, have a look around your home. Would you like to improve something? If yes, do it right now.