Retracting faucet by Robert Brown

[machiningfool]

I recently finished building my house, took nine years, but it's paid for. I designed the house around me, so in the kitchen, I have a 3.5 ft. by 10 ft. island and to have the advantage of two uses for the large area, I decided to retract the faucet out of the way. To fill the sink void, I put a 3/4 inch thick piece of granite to fill the hole, I do that by hand. My first design I didn't like because it just didn't look right. What I had was a piece of granite above the faucet and when the faucet was up, the rectangular piece was held up by two wooden boards, and when I retracted it the tower would come down and fill the hole. I didn't like the looks when it was up, so I designed the fill piece be automatically slid forward and raise upward to fill the hole, much better. I will attempt to link the youtube video here. The mechanism operates with two linear slides, one for the faucet, which is nothing more than a vertical drawer, and the second to move the rectangular granite forward and lift up to the level of the surface. Robert Brown machiningfool

[kbalch]

Very, very cool!

Best not to give my wife any ideas, though…

Ken

[Jon]

And that, folks, is why we have the "Not a Tool, but Homemade" subforum

Really impressive, machiningfool. Wow.

[machiningfool]

Thanks guys for your kind words. Like I say, I love a challenge. Robert Brown machiningfool

[DIYer]

Very nice, but as Ken says, better to not show the wife.

[blkadder]

When we moved into our house, we finally have granite counter tops, and now I know that my wife will want one of these when she sees the video. Great work getting that to work, and just first rate craftsmanship. Thanks for posting this.

Ron

[machiningfool]

I don't know if this is good or bad, if your wife wants one. I took me about an hour to design the faucet lifting portion, but it took me about a week to design the mechanical for the granite filler portion and about a week to figure the wiring of all of the limit switches, there are about 10 of them, and a 4 pole, double throw, push on switch. It was fun building it, but challenging. Robert Brown.

[machiningfool]

I found a video of the vertical lift for the faucet, couldn't find the one of the hole filler, thought you might be interested in how it looks out of the cabinet. Bob.

[Paul Alciatore]

That looks neat, but what about water leaking down into the cabinet? I don't know about you, but in my kitchen there is a lot of water that gets splashed on and around the faucet. And is that vertical stem that the faucet fits in also some kind of interlock? Or can the mechanism be activated to retract the faucet with the arm in other positions?

[machiningfool]

I don't splash water around the faucet hole. The vertical rod is a safety device, when it is in the faucet cannot be retracted, so to retract, I fold the faucet back and take out the rod and it releases a micro switch and then it can be retracted.