Compressed Air Vacuum Cleaner - An easy DIY project

Description

Need a small vacuum cleaner for tight spaces? Have an air compressor handy? In this episode of the #HouseOfHacks, Harley shows how to make a DIY compressed air vacuum cleaner out of some junk parts and a couple fittings from the hardware store.

Skip to the project build.

Related videos:
Make your own manometer.
Dishwasher replacement.
Why a new air compressor.

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Compressed Air Vacuum Cleaner - An easy DIY project

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Incidental: "Rocket"

Transcript

Do you ever have a small mess in the shop that you need to clean up?

Something that may be in an out of the way place where a big shop vac can't get to?

Or maybe a big shop vac is too much power and you something that doesn't have quite as much suction?

Well today at the House of Hacks we're going to make our own DIY vacuum cleaner.

That uses compressed air as a power source.

[Intro]

Hi. Harley here.

Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to make a DIY vacuum cleaner that runs off compressed air.

Now, compressed air may not necessarily be the most intuitive thing to use to make a vacuum cleaner with.

So, we're going to first talk about the physics of how this operates and then we're going to get into the making of this vacuum cleaner with just some surplus parts that I had lying around and a couple fittings from the hardware store.

If you're not interested in the physics and you want to get right into the build, there's a link in the description below that will take you directly to that part of this video.

Now, let's take a look at the physics.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, there was a family named Bernoulli that had a number of prominent mathematicians and scientists who contributed to our better understanding of the natural world.

One of these people was Daniel Bernoulli who recognized that in a fluid system, as the speed of the fluid increases, it's pressure decreases.

He published this discovery in a book on hydrodynamics in 1738.

This principle is used in many of our modern devices from airplanes to computer disk drives.

Later in the 18th century, along came Giovanni Venturi.

He was a man of many accomplishments and among his achievements, he applied Bernoulli's principle to a device consisting of tubes that demonstrated the effect of pressure differentials.

In 1797, he published a treatise on hydrodynamics wherein he described this effect that was eventually named after him, the Venturi Effect.

This picture illustrates what happens.

When air goes through these tapered tubes, as the cross section of the tube decreases, the speed of the fluid must increase. And as Bernoulli's principle indicates, the pressure must correspondingly decrease.

When a U shaped tube, known as a manometer, is connected between the slower moving fluid and the faster moving fluid, the pressure differential causes the gauge's fluid to rise on the low pressure side and drop on the high pressure side.

This low pressure can be used in many applications, from the gas furnace that heats your home to the hose attachment to drain your waterbed to the vacuum cleaner we're going to make today.

OK, to make this, I have some scrap tubing I scavenged off the old dishwasher that I replaced.

Here's some water line and some drain line, I think. This might be water supply line. I don't remember right now off the top of my head.

I have an old T-shirt that was in the scrap bin.

I've got a blow gun for my new air compressor that has a nozzle on it.

I've got an old 2 liter pop bottle.

And I've got a T fitting and an L fitting.

So let's get making this.

OK, the way this is going to work is we have the blow tube that will connect into the end of a piece of flexible pipe.

The flexible pipe will have the T connector on it.

The bottom of the T connector will have this black pipe that will we'll use as the vacuum hose.

And the other side of the T will be the discharge that everything that is picked up by the vacuum will go through as well as the compressed air as it is escaping.

That will go through a tube that has the L bracket on it and the other side of the L bracket will have the bottle on it with a hole cut out to let the air come out so it doesn't escape and all the debris will collect in the plastic bottle.

That's the theory anyway.

[Time lapse of build]

[Example of use]

If you like workshop related projects, like making vacuum cleaners out of some trash and a couple parts from the hardware store, or other things made out of wood, metal, electronics, photography, things of that nature, hit the subscribe button down below and YouTube will notify you next time I upload something.

Until next time, go make something.

Perfection's not required.

Fun is!

How to make an air lottery ball machine

Description
Need an air lottery ball machine? In this episode I show how I approached the task of making a homemade lottery machine including what I did and why.

Other homemade lottery machines on YouTube:

• The first one I found. So-so performance.
• A more complicated but better operating one.

Video this lottery machine was built for: Super-Minilypse Utah, USA (iStock drawing)

Playlist of other project overviews.

Music under Creative Commons License.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: "Awesome Call" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com

Transcript

Today at the House of Hacks we're going to look at making a lottery machine.

[music]

Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.

One Thursday a while ago, my buddy Rich gave me a call. He asked if I could build him a lottery machine. I told him, "yeah, I thought we probably could do something." Then he asked if he could have it by Monday. It turns out he was responsible for organizing an event that had a limited number of slots. Of course they had more people interested in attending than they had slots available and he needed to some sort of drawing. He thought a corny, 70s style video would kind of spice it up. Make it a bit more interesting than just pulling names out of a hat and reading them. So I asked for a budget and told him I'd get back to him.

I first went online to search for places where I could rent something like this. That would have been the easiest, most straight-forward thing to do, particularly given the time constraints. But I didn't find anything so the next thing I looked for was something where somebody had done something similar. I did find one YouTube video and that's all I found. It was a pretty simple build and didn't really work too well. Since then I've actually found another one that worked very, very well. It was a little complex probably, particularly for the time frame I had; it looked like it was microprocessor controlled. Links to both of those are in the description below.

So this is what I came up with. I found a couple punch bowls the right size at Walmart; they're just plastic bowls in the party section.

For the output side where the balls come out, I found that the shielding tube that you get for fluorescent tubes that's designed to keep the glass from showering down on top of you if you shatter the glass, those tubes are the perfect diameter for ping pong balls. And so I just cut a hole in the top and hot glued this in.

For causing all the air to blow around inside I decided to use the blower side of my shop vac. Because the shop vac is so loud, we decided we probably didn't want it on set right next to this while we were filming so we got twenty foot piece of dryer duct; the exhaust vent stuff. And that stretches out and like I said I think it's twenty foot long if I recall correctly.

I cut a piece of wood and drilled a hole in it with a piece of screen over it that would fit in the bottom of the punch bowl where we also drilled a hole. And then I attached -- this is a union that's designed to connect two of these together. I just cut slits on one side and folded those tabs down and hot glued it to the wood.

Then on the other side where the vacuum blower connector has to go in I went to the plumbing aisle and found a rubber drain piece. I don't know exactly what it's used for but the inside diameter was perfect for the vacuum hose and the outside diameter perfectly fit inside a three inch PVC coupler. So I got a reducer that's the three inch to four inch reducer thing and hot glued the rubber part inside here. And then this fit perfectly in the four inch dryer duct.

I hooked everything together and all the balls bounced around very nicely. We were really pleased with the way it turned out in the end. We did have to drill some holes in here and also in here to relieve some of the pressure. We found it was over pressurizing this and it tended to want to blow the assembly apart. But once we put enough holes in here it reduced the pressure enough that the balls bounced around perfectly and came out without any problem but we didn't have problems with it wanting to burst apart.

So, I'll put everything together and we'll take a look at how it works.

[music]

Thanks for watching. Please "Like" if you enjoyed this episode and here's a playlist of other project overviews like this one. Here at the House of Hacks we cover a wide variety of maker related topics. Subscribe if this interests you. Leave a comment or question below; I'd love to hear from you.

So, until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun!