How Will Load Rating Vary For Side And Bottom-Mount Drawer Slides?

No cabinet is complete without integrating at least one drawer. These drawers are of course mounted to the cabinet using drawer slides. As a manufacturer, the onus of choosing the right type of slide falls on you. However, you might be confused if the side-mount or bottom-mount drawer slide will be perfect for a particular case. To clear your queries, here is a small comparison between their load-bearing capacities. 

Choosing Between Side And Bottom-Mount Drawer Slides

The first step to choose a drawer slide is to determine its load rating. This can be defined as the maximum weight the drawer slide can hold up effectively before it breaks or suffers damage. However, this load rating can be different for different mounting configurations. 

Side-Mount Drawer Slides

These slides use two parallelly placed ball-bearing drawer slides, as this is the best technology for handling heavy loads. In this case, determining the load rating is pretty straightforward. If a drawer is supporting a maximum weight of 500 lbs, then each drawer slide can handle 250 lbs. However, for bottom-mount slides, the case is not so straightforward.

Bottom-Mount Drawer Slides

In this instance, the mounting orientation has changed significantly. Instead of mounting horizontally, drawer slides are mounted at the bottom. Therefore, these ball-bearing slides will have different load-bearing capacities based on the plane. Since the entire weight of the drawer rests on them, these slides are much stronger on a vertical plane. However, they may not be as strong as side-mount drawer slides when horizontal compression forces are applied.

Therefore, depending on the plane of the load, the rating of drawer slides can change. Hence, it's important to keep this in mind while selecting drawer slides for a cabinet.

For more tips and insights on drawer slides and other hardware, reach out to us at Kipco Hardware. A hidden gem in Kitchener Ontario, we are a proud, family-owned kitchen cabinet hardware supplier partnered with leading global hardware brands like Rev-A-Shelf, Blum, Salice and more. So give us a call today and our friendly and knowledgeable staff can help with placing an order or answering your queries.