Anyone use KV drawer slides?

[Jetboy]

I'm not happy with the drawer slides I have from CS GLide - they are side mount soft close - and they are not working well.

The gliding action is excellent and they appear very well made. However, the design of the piston on the soft close is poor. They often malfunction by not catching the piston and setting it in the proper position. The piston then retracts to the close position while the drawer is open. This leads to a situation where the drawer ends up about 1/2" away from being closed sitting against the retracted piston. A little effort will push it past, but it basically does this every time once it starts to fail. I have a couple drawers that are used a lot doing this. I'm at the point of having 3 options:

1Replace with new soft closes
2Remove the pistons and use them as is like normal drawer slides
3Have new boxes made to fit Blum undermounts

If the side mount replacements are of reasonable quality I'd prefer that route. Cheapest and easiest option. The KV slides look to be a much better mechanism for reliably "setting" the soft close function. I also like the idea of the accuride 3832aa which soft open assist and soft close with a small piston that goes under the drawer. I think I have room for them if I re-mount the drawer faces just a little on the bottom most drawers.

Any advice or experience on either model would be greatly appreciated.

The KV uses this type of internal mechanism:

As compared to the CS Glide that look like this:

 

[45Kevin]

K&V is an industry standard for commercial quality cabinet drawers.

edit:
I just noticed that the K&V slides you pictured have the soft close feature. We haven't used that feature for about 4 years, and at that time we had trouble with the little plungers. It was the first time they were available, and they were supplied by the K&V people for free as a demo site. I cannot say whether K&V have worked out the bugs yet. I would hope so though.

We use hundreds of the K&V non-soft close slides very year though with out trouble.

 

[Jetboy]

Thanks Kevin. I ordered one set of the KV slides to try them out. What are your thoughts on the pull force required?

The reason I ask is that I also bought one set of Lowe's house brand and they are no good. The pull force is really high. They just don't slide well and feel sticky. Could be an issue with adjustment/alignment? They are $20 a set, so they aren't cheap in price.

 

[45Kevin]

Sometimes they need a tug to get moving. My co-worker says that many times they work better when the drawer has some weight in it. He also recommends putting some lube on them when you install. The lube will also help keep the noise of the roller balls down

Accu-ride is another big name in commercial standard drawer slides.