Soft Close Hinge Stopped Working
You will find soft close hinges in almost all modern kitchens. You may realize that these small mechanisms are failing after some use. Say your soft close hinges are not working, what do you do? You have several options ranging from calling a carpenter, getting professionals or even doing it yourself. But before you do that, first read what our team of experts have to say about it.
Why Are My Soft Close Hinges Not Working?
Soft close hinges do a wonderful job in ensuring that your cabinet does don’t slam when shutting. If your cabinets have small doors, you can install light hinge settings, however, you will need a strong hinge setting for medium and big size doors.
The soft close hinge comes with a very sensitive mechanism that makes it prone to breakdowns. Both the light weight and strong settings may fail to work for different reasons. We dived into this topic and came up with the following issues and hat you need to do to fix them.
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Loose screws
When your soft close hinge stops working, the first suspect is a loose screw. This will make the hinge to be weaker and at times it gets displaced. You can easily remedy this by first identifying the loose screw and tighten it with a Philips screw driver.
The door will slags downwards when the screw gets loose. In severe cases it can cause the hinge to separate which in turn forces the other hinges to take up the load. The load strains the other hinges and ends up with a damage.
In most cases a small door has one or two hinges while medium and huge doors have multiple hinges. When you have one loose hinge that goes unfixed for some time, it causes damages to the other hinges. This will call for a replacement of several hinges.
Solution;
Identify the loose screw on the hinge and use a screwdriver to screw it back in place. Ensure you realign the loosed or hanging door before tightening the loose screw.
Be careful not to tighten the screw so much as this can wear out the screw holes or even cause too much build up tension. This will mean that you take up on a soft close hinge tension adjustment job that you had not planned.
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Slamming Door
The work of the soft close hinge is to prevent the door from slamming when you shut it. The door closes with less force thanks to the soft close hinges. If the hinge has a problem it will shut with a lot of force causing it to slam and this can be annoying.
The main causes of slamming with soft close hinges are; hinges being unaligned causing them to overlap and collide with each other, loose screws or screws that were installed incorrectly.
The hinges also stop working and the door slams when the hydraulic buffer gets stuck or the mechanism wears out.
Solution;
The first step is to identify the problem that is causing the slamming. Close the door smoothly and check if the doors are colliding with each other. That shows that the doors are overlapping. If the doors are overlapping go ahead and find the loose screw and tighten it.
If you get no loose screw, then it means the problem is with the alignment of the hinges. To resolve this you will need to uninstall all the hinges and install them again.
To do a thorough job with blum hinge adjustment, pick two screws one at the top and one at the bottom. Then hold the door at a proper high or align it properly and tighten both screws.
If the mechanism of the hinge has stopped working, you have no option but to get new ravinte soft close hinges.
Finally test if the door closes smoothly and slowly without making any noise.
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Door Not Closing
The soft close hinges are specially made for a smooth ride without slum shutting. If by any instance the mechanism used is too strong or robust, then you will experience closing issues. This normally happen when the setting is too high for the door to shut.
In cases where the setting is weak or loose, the door will slam shut with force. This are signs that the hinges were not adjusted during the installation process.
Solution;
This is an easy task to do as all you have is locate the resistance adjust. This is a small screw that has a plus and minus sign. Then go ahead and screw it properly using a Philips screwdriver.
If the door is not closing, you need to lower the resistance and if the door is slamming you need to increase the resistance.
Finally close and open the door severally to ensure that you got it right.
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Squeaking or Slow Closing Door.
If your soft close hinge starts to make noise all of a sudden and it is annoying you with the squeaking noises, you need to get it checked. This is majorly caused by rust that forms on the hinge or the lubrication is not sufficient.
Your kitchen can start to feel outdated once the doors start squeaking and you will always want to know how to fix squeaky door hinges. Try out the solution below.
Solution;
The easiest way to silence a squeaking door is to apply a lubricant. You can opt for a lubricant spray like blaster lubricant and spray on the hinge to make it soft.
Alternatively, you can grease or oil the hinge. Once you have done this, you can adjust the soft close hinge speed.
Conclusion.
We hope you had a possible solution for your soft close cabinet hinges by reading through this wonderful insights. It is as easy as you can see and you do not need to hire anyone especially if you have the highlighted tools. You will install the soft close hinges yourself without breaking a sweat.
