Essay --

Furniture can enhance the appearance of any space and add value to the house while improving the function. Wall cabinet is one of a furniture range that can be used in a kitchen, living room, bedroom, office and many other spaces. Wall cabinets are built in a wide variety of designs, material, functions and sizes. Most wall cabinets are simply for storage but nowadays, people require durable, sturdy, long lasting yet affordable furniture with improved functionality. Modular furniture provides components that can be combined to meet individual needs and tastes which utilize all space where it can be interchanged and adjusted. In order to create a successful design of a modular kitchen cabinet, appropriate hanging mechanisms are needed. It is important to understand the properties of materials and design of the hanging mechanism so that proper utilization can be achieved to ensure efficient product design and user safety. Material selection is among one of the most important aspects that must be taken into account before any hanging mechanism is produced. This is because material plays an important role in determining the suitability and durability of the hanging mechanism design. Nowadays, more advanced materials have been used to replace conventional materials because advanced materials offer more advantages (Myrdal, 2009). For instance in furniture manufacturing, conventional material such as solid wood have been replaced with alternative lumber such as particle board, plywood, glulam, LVL or OSB because of their economic and production efficiencies. This study is aimed at discovering a better solution by providing an alternative material and design to make the most important part of a wall mounted cabinet which is the hanging... ...gs but could produce a higher strength product. Therefore, using this material as hanging mechanism could lower raw material cost and at the same time provide a strong and eco-friendly alternative hanging mechanism. Hypothetically, if the proposed design (French cleat) and material (LVL) has the same or better qualities than the existing design and material, it can be used as the hanging mechanism in modular kitchen cabinets. Therefore, the thesis is proposing a new design of hanging mechanism using LVL which could probably give similar or better loading capacity and mechanical properties as compared to existing designs used in kitchen cabinets. Due to the lack of natural resources, the alternative material which is engineered wood product offers additional advantages as it retains the structural properties of wood and may be used as a substitute for solid wood.