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Our Billy shelves are 15 years old and I would not consider them disposable, poorly designed, or fabricated from low-quality materials. Frankly, they have been

Our Billy shelves are 15 years old and I would not consider them disposable, poorly designed, or fabricated from low-quality materials. Frankly, they have been an excellent investment. The same goes for the couches our kids jumped on for years. I suspect this comes from having been assembled by an engineer and not the average [insert mechanically unqualified archetype here for flamewar]. For decorating reasons that I cannot explain, I periodically disassemble some pieces and store them for future reintroduction after painting or some other visual adjustments without issue, keeping in mind that all those little metal bits must be stored in a bag and tie-wrapped to the kit. I find a certain elegance in the austere design simplicity and construction but recognize it may not be to everyone's preferred taste. Like most objects around us, IKEA products have potential for good or evil, depending upon the user's intent and usage.

teachrdan 3y ago
It's apparent you didn't RTFA before posting. From the part before the paywall, even: "IKEA grew into a furniture behemoth with a relentless focus on keeping costs low, but that goal has become more challenging. The price of metal, glass, wood and plastic have spiraled up, as have shipping costs. Inflation has squeezed consumers’ wallets. Managers at IKEA knew that something had to change to keep prices down and profits up, so in the past couple of years they have taken some of their products back to the drawing board." This explains why the nicer Ikea furniture you purchased 15 years ago is of a much higher quality than what is built today.
- contingencies 3y ago
  I too grew up with some of that in the family house, AFAIK it's all gone now. OTOH, I put together no less than five Billy bookcases in the last month. These were in two visual styles and two height configurations (standard 2m and extra 2.4m). I was somewhat shocked that there were multiple assembly systems being delivered this year even amongst those iconic products. Chiefly, one type has nail-pinned back, and one type has a plastic pressure-pinned back. AFAIK the nail-pin system is older and ... it is shit. The plastic-pinned system is new and far better. Why? People will hammer themselves. Nails can be easily lost. Hammers aren't always available to consumers. Neighbours hate hammering noises, and many people now live in close proximity to strangers in apartments. CNC cut holes are always in the right place. Plastic pressure pins can be taken out if the furniture needs to be disassembled for relocation. I admire Ikea industrial design and consider assembly of their products an educational experience because, having spent a lot of time in the past half-decade with mechanical design responsibility also spanning production process engineering and associated logistics, Ikea stuff is just so damn practical. IMHO Ikea products and their associated documentation are proof that design improvement remains possible... even for "iconic" designs that are the back-stop of their brand. That said, I strongly dislike their stores.
  - AlanYx 3y ago
    Some of their current generation plastic fasteners are ingenious and probably the product of substantial mechanical design expertise. Their Dundra table (the Ikea "Lego table") is a good example... I thought there was no way that the way the drawers are assembled (plastic fasteners, no hammering) could possibly stand up to abuse by kids without becoming loose, but it legitimately seems to work.
    - contingencies 3y ago
      Yes it would be very interesting to see the design etymology of the injection molded plastic cam-lock parts. Here's a list of them. https://www.furnitureparts.com/collections/ikea-cam-lock-nuts https://www.furnitureparts.com/collections/ikea-cam-lock-nut... I've seen them produced by others but would hazard a guess Ikea was one of the earlier users if not the origin of the design. Here is a discussion of it - https://www.core77.com/posts/27725/Death-to-Cam-Lock-Nuts-Flatpack-Hardware-That-Will-Hopefully-Become-Obsolete https://www.core77.com/posts/27725/Death-to-Cam-Lock-Nuts-Fl... - apparently incorrectly suggesting it will be partly replaced with this system - https://www.core77.com//posts/59321/How-Ikeas-New-Joinery-is-Advancing-Their-Design https://www.core77.com//posts/59321/How-Ikeas-New-Joinery-is... The part of the allegedly proposed evolution which is not obvious to non-production engineers is that the milled voids within the proposed table interior are only possible to achieve with angled CNC work which is not something Ikea has traditionally done as it is historically PITA. You can basically only do it cheaply with custom milling robotics, which is only feasible on production at a certain (not huge but decent) scale. Specifically you probably want to have a fixed angle of approach and the capacity to rotate the mill's work-head by 90 degree increments (as this is faster, more energy efficient, and more spatially efficient than rotating the workpiece itself). Then simply mill the same feature four times. The alternative is rotating the workpiece on a huge rotary table and using a standard mill, but that requires angled mounting and de-mounting of the workpiece which is a PITA requiring equipment (eg. a robotic arm) itself. Production cost, part count and user experience wise this is brilliant design enabled primarily by innovation in fabrication automation. Kudos to Ikea's prototyping team. However, marketing wise a fat, relatively unstable table with zero drawers may be a hard sell and hard to differentiate branding wise from a straight clone. It seems the design made it to market but with some kind of odd-ball manually hex key driven cog-as-screw-proxy system as per the video here: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lisabo-coffee-table-ash-veneer-90297657/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lisabo-coffee-table-ash-veneer-... The primary benefit of that system appears to be stability in disassembly and re-assembly (in some ways this is "furniture for the homeless", a very millennial design proposition). In addition, I'd hazard a guess brand differentiation was another high priority concern in the eventual decision to go to market with this oddball cog system, since AFAIK a factory-mounted thread insert and a countersunk screw would have been easier and probably cheaper, yet rapidly cloned.
tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago
The Billy I bought in 2020 is certainly of disposable quality. It barely holds the weight of the books thus barely performs its primary function.

teachrdan 3y ago

It's apparent you didn't RTFA before posting. From the part before the paywall, even: "IKEA grew into a furniture behemoth with a relentless focus on keeping costs low, but that goal has become more challenging. The price of metal, glass, wood and plastic have spiraled up, as have shipping costs. Inflation has squeezed consumers’ wallets. Managers at IKEA knew that something had to change to keep prices down and profits up, so in the past couple of years they have taken some of their products back to the drawing board." This explains why the nicer Ikea furniture you purchased 15 years ago is of a much higher quality than what is built today.

contingencies 3y ago
I too grew up with some of that in the family house, AFAIK it's all gone now. OTOH, I put together no less than five Billy bookcases in the last month. These were in two visual styles and two height configurations (standard 2m and extra 2.4m). I was somewhat shocked that there were multiple assembly systems being delivered this year even amongst those iconic products. Chiefly, one type has nail-pinned back, and one type has a plastic pressure-pinned back. AFAIK the nail-pin system is older and ... it is shit. The plastic-pinned system is new and far better. Why? People will hammer themselves. Nails can be easily lost. Hammers aren't always available to consumers. Neighbours hate hammering noises, and many people now live in close proximity to strangers in apartments. CNC cut holes are always in the right place. Plastic pressure pins can be taken out if the furniture needs to be disassembled for relocation. I admire Ikea industrial design and consider assembly of their products an educational experience because, having spent a lot of time in the past half-decade with mechanical design responsibility also spanning production process engineering and associated logistics, Ikea stuff is just so damn practical. IMHO Ikea products and their associated documentation are proof that design improvement remains possible... even for "iconic" designs that are the back-stop of their brand. That said, I strongly dislike their stores.
- AlanYx 3y ago
  Some of their current generation plastic fasteners are ingenious and probably the product of substantial mechanical design expertise. Their Dundra table (the Ikea "Lego table") is a good example... I thought there was no way that the way the drawers are assembled (plastic fasteners, no hammering) could possibly stand up to abuse by kids without becoming loose, but it legitimately seems to work.
  - contingencies 3y ago
    Yes it would be very interesting to see the design etymology of the injection molded plastic cam-lock parts. Here's a list of them. https://www.furnitureparts.com/collections/ikea-cam-lock-nuts https://www.furnitureparts.com/collections/ikea-cam-lock-nut... I've seen them produced by others but would hazard a guess Ikea was one of the earlier users if not the origin of the design. Here is a discussion of it - https://www.core77.com/posts/27725/Death-to-Cam-Lock-Nuts-Flatpack-Hardware-That-Will-Hopefully-Become-Obsolete https://www.core77.com/posts/27725/Death-to-Cam-Lock-Nuts-Fl... - apparently incorrectly suggesting it will be partly replaced with this system - https://www.core77.com//posts/59321/How-Ikeas-New-Joinery-is-Advancing-Their-Design https://www.core77.com//posts/59321/How-Ikeas-New-Joinery-is... The part of the allegedly proposed evolution which is not obvious to non-production engineers is that the milled voids within the proposed table interior are only possible to achieve with angled CNC work which is not something Ikea has traditionally done as it is historically PITA. You can basically only do it cheaply with custom milling robotics, which is only feasible on production at a certain (not huge but decent) scale. Specifically you probably want to have a fixed angle of approach and the capacity to rotate the mill's work-head by 90 degree increments (as this is faster, more energy efficient, and more spatially efficient than rotating the workpiece itself). Then simply mill the same feature four times. The alternative is rotating the workpiece on a huge rotary table and using a standard mill, but that requires angled mounting and de-mounting of the workpiece which is a PITA requiring equipment (eg. a robotic arm) itself. Production cost, part count and user experience wise this is brilliant design enabled primarily by innovation in fabrication automation. Kudos to Ikea's prototyping team. However, marketing wise a fat, relatively unstable table with zero drawers may be a hard sell and hard to differentiate branding wise from a straight clone. It seems the design made it to market but with some kind of odd-ball manually hex key driven cog-as-screw-proxy system as per the video here: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lisabo-coffee-table-ash-veneer-90297657/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lisabo-coffee-table-ash-veneer-... The primary benefit of that system appears to be stability in disassembly and re-assembly (in some ways this is "furniture for the homeless", a very millennial design proposition). In addition, I'd hazard a guess brand differentiation was another high priority concern in the eventual decision to go to market with this oddball cog system, since AFAIK a factory-mounted thread insert and a countersunk screw would have been easier and probably cheaper, yet rapidly cloned.

tap-snap-or-nap 3y ago

The Billy I bought in 2020 is certainly of disposable quality. It barely holds the weight of the books thus barely performs its primary function.