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 easily make a low-voltage, remote shop vac switch

Description

Controlling appliances remotely can be useful, but some ready made solutions are pretty expensive. Today Harley shows an inexpensive way he uses to turn his shop vac on and off remotely. The same items could be used to control any appliance remotely.

The central part of this system is the PowerSwitch Tail. It contains an electronically controlled switch to turn things on an off. There are a large number of ways to control this. In this episode, we talk about a very easy way to use this device. In future episodes, we’ll expand on different ways to control this switch that can be useful around the shop environment.

PowerSwitch Tail II (Amazon affiliate link)

For a written transcript, go to How to easily make a low-voltage, remote shop vac switch

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Sound effect: living-room-light-switch by alienxxx at http://freesound.org

Transcript

In the comments of “How to quiet a shop vac”, Rob liked the low-voltage remote switch aspect of how I control the vacuum and he asked “Can you show me an example and material break-down that could easily then be added onto?”

Today at the House of Hacks, I will talk about that very thing.

[Music]

Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.

When I converted my shop vac to a central, plumbed in system, I wanted a way to easily start and stop it. I went through a couple designs before settling on the one I used. Today I’ll show a variation on my design that's an easy way of controlling a shop vac with a simple wired remote.

While my application is a shop vac, you could actually control anything using this technique. In the future I plan to show some upgrades to this control, but for now, I wanted to keep it really simple.

Before I start, I do want to point out that there are ready made solutions from expensive to cheap. I’ve not tried any of these to be able to make any specific recommendations but I did want to mention them for the sake of completeness.

If you just want to get the job done without hassling with making something yourself, you might want to investigate these. But if you want something that’s got your own style to it, you want to learn something, you need something that’s not available off-the-shelf or just want to have the joy of making something, hopefully the following will help.

At the core of how I made mine is a device called a PowerSwitch Tail. This is a short cord that looks very much like an extension cord. It has a plug on one end and an outlet on the other. What sets this apart from other extension cords is it has an electrically controlled switch built into it.

On the side of this box are two connectors. When these connectors have between 3 and 12 volts DC applied to them, the main power is turned on. When there is no voltage on the connectors, the main power is turned off. It only draws up to 30 milliamps, so it’s pretty easy to control with electronics, like an Arduino or other digital circuitry.

However, the easiest way to control this is simply with one or more batteries, a bit of wire and a switch. In this example, I’m using some D cells because that’s what I had lying around, but a 9 volt battery would be simpler and smaller.

To use it, just connect the negative side of the battery to the minus connector. Connect the positive side of the battery to one side of a switch and the other side of the switch to the plus connector. Now, when the switch is on, the device will be on and when the switch is off, the device will be off.

And that’s the easiest way I know to remote control a vacuum, or any device. The cost of the PowerSwitch Tail is around $30 and the wire and switch is based on what you want to use. You may have something in your junk drawer that could be used, like a USB cable or network cable that could have the ends cut off. Switches could be scavenged from dead electronics.

Or you could get new materials. Low voltage wire is a couple cents a foot at the home improvement stores and they have a wide variety of switches for a couple dollars each. A box to mount the switch in could be anything from a disposable food container to something more robust. Just use your imagination.

As I mentioned at the start, I do plan to do follow-up videos talking about different, more capable, although more complicated, ways to switch the PowerSwitch Tail on and off.

In conclusion, let’s have a conversation in the comments about buying off-the-shelf solutions versus making your own, or anything else you’re interested in.

If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I’m glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark and through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography and other similar materials. If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.

Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!

How to easily make a vacuum port for the central shop vac system

Description

The previous vacuum port design was less complicated than blast gates but still took a bit of work. Today Harley shows how to make a new and improved design that is much faster to make and easier to use.

How to quiet a shop vac

For a written transcript, go to How to easily make a vacuum port for the shop vac

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: “Private Eye" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Sound effects: living-room-light-switch by alienxxx at http://freesound.org

Transcript

In my video about “How to quiet a shop vac” I showed how I made hose connection ports modeled after a house central vac system. Today at the House of Hacks, I’m going to show a "new and improved” design that is simpler and faster to make.

[Music]

Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.

After making the first couple ports for my central vac shop system, I was perusing the plumbing department at the local home improvement store and saw these connectors.

They’re rubber couplers to go between two 2” rigid pipes with hose clamps on both sides. I realized they were the right diameter for the vacuum hose so I picked up a couple of them, along with some 45 degree connectors.

Back in the shop I cut a short piece of pipe and glued it into one side of the 45 degree elbow.

I attached the rubber connector to the other side and tightened the hose clamp down tight.

The other hose clamp I adjusted so the vacuum hose was a snug fit but could still be removed.

I trimmed the corners off a 4x4 and put it in the lathe.

Next I turned it into a tapered plug that fit into the coupler with a snug fit.

Finally I connected a chain to the plug so it wouldn’t wander off too far and get lost.

All told, I spent about 1 hour on this, including the trip to the home store. If you did an assembly line, you could make a bunch of these in pretty short order. This is by far much a much easier port to make than my previous design.

In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments about a time a designed of yours evolved over time.

If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I’m glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark and through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography and shop projects like this one. If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.

Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!

How to quiet a shop vac - efficiency measurements

Description

How well did Harley meet his goals by setting up the shop vac to be a centralized system? In this episode, the changes are quantified with measurements for noise, vacuum and air flow.

Related videos:

• How to quiet a shop vac
• How to make a vacuum (or pressure) gauge

For a written transcript, go to How to quiet a shop vac - efficiency measurements

Music and sound effects under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 or 4.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Light switch effect: http://freesound.org/people/AlienXXX/sounds/151347/

Transcript

Today at the House of Hacks we compare some efficiency parameters of the shop vac's original configuration and its new one.

[Music]

In this earlier episode, I presented some problems I had using my shop vac, some goals I wanted to meet by reconfiguring how I use it and how I actually made some of the changes. In this episode I want to show some of the before and after measurements to see what actually changed.

To recap, my goals were to 1) have minimal daily setup; 2) be convenient to use; 3) be much quieter; 4) and all this at minimal cost. I attempted to do this by converting it to a DIY central vac system.

Today I am going to show how well I accomplished my goals. I’ll show what it takes to use the new configuration, a couple specifications between the old and new systems: the loudness, the vacuum pressure and the air flow.

Overall I’m really pleased with the ease of operation. I typically just leave everything plugged in, setup and ready to go. All I need to do is grab the hose and press the power button. Of course if I’m working on a piece of equipment, I have to do some setup, but that is pretty minimal. I just move the hose to the closest outlet and connect to the equipment.

One of the goals was noise reduction. I used a freely available decibel app on my tablet to measure the noise levels. Admittedly this is an uncalibrated device and won't give exact results, but it does give a good idea as to relative differences.

In the shop, the vacuum runs around 85 db.

And when it's outside the box on the other side of the wall, it runs about 70 db.

When it's inside the box I made for it, it drops down to about 62-63 db.

Overall a reduction of over 20 db. Quite a bit. For comparison purposes, that's like going from being next to a food blender to being in an office.

A side effect of adding the plumbing is reduced efficiency of the vacuum pressure and air flow. Devices are available to measure these parameters accurately, but they're not cheap and I was more interested in relative loss, so I hacked together a couple instruments.

First vacuum. This is a simple DIY vacuum gauge that I made out of a simple loop of vinyl tubing, some water and a ruler. I explained how I made it in this other video over here. One end is open to the atmosphere and the other is connected to our vacuum. The difference in water levels tells us how much vacuum is being generated.

As you can see, we’re getting about 38, 39 inches of water here. And I'll consider this 100% of baseline for what the vacuum is capable generating, for comparison in future measurements.

Connected to the first port it reads 31.5 inches.

Connected to the second port it reads 32 inches.

Connected to the third port it reads 31 inches.

So, the ports have a reading of about 31.5 inches of water on average or a loss of about 20%.

To measure air flow, I picked up an inexpensive anemometer off Amazon.

Connected directly to the shop vac, this reads as an overload. The vacuum is advertised as 150 mph, but I suspect, based on the noise of the anemometer, that it’s not really that fast. For the purposes of this test I’ll estimate this to be about 110 miles per hour (MPH). Like before, this will be the 100% baseline for the other measurements.

Connected to the first port it reads 89 mph.

Connected to the second port it reads 88.5 mph.

Connected to the third port it reads 86 mph.

So, on average, the ports read 87.8 mph or a loss of about 20%.

While there's a loss of 20% in both vacuum and air flow, in practical application, I don't really notice any difference. It still picks up about what I need it to in about the same way.

In summary, I'm really pleased with the new setup. It's much easier to work with so I'm more diligent at keeping things cleaner.

In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments below what you think about vacuums versus dust collectors as a means of keeping the shop clean.

If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. Through these videos I hope to inspire, educate and inform makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar materials. Thanks for letting me encourage your creativity. So subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.

Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!

How to make a vacuum (or pressure) gauge

Description

Vacuum and pressure are two sides of the same coin. A manometer can measure both. In this episode, Harley shows how to make a DIY gauge to measure relatively low vacuums and pressures for shop use.

Part 1: How to quiet a shop vac
Part 2: Central shop vac efficiency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbLElnfZmno

Unit conversion web site:
The unit converter

For a written transcript, go to How to make a vacuum (or pressure) gauge

Music and photos under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com)
Incidental music:
“George Street Shuffle” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com)
“Mining by Moonlight” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com)

SU Carbs photo: by Cgxke at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbs-SU-HD8.jpg

Photos under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic:
Organ pipes photo: by Xauxa at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Forkarla_kyrka_organ_pipes.jpg

Transcript

Need a vacuum gauge to sync your carbs, test your pipe organ or shop vac? Today at the House of Hacks I’m going to make an instrument to measure low-pressure vacuums.

Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.

I recently made some changes to my shop vac system and want to quantify the changes to the vacuum’s efficiency. One of the things I need is a vacuum gauge, also known as a manometer. Because I’m thrifty, I decided to make my own.

Since some people find it interesting, I want to start with the theory of operation. If you want to skip directly to the build, you can click here.

There are three types of pressure measurement: absolute pressure, differential pressure and gauge pressure.

Imagine a perfect vacuum. Like absolute zero in temperature, this is an ideal that cannot actually be accomplished, but is useful as a standard to measure from. Now let’s put a container with a gas inside that vacuum. The pressure the gas exerts on the container is the absolute pressure. Or said a different way, absolute pressure is the pressure measured on a scale where zero is a perfect vacuum.

Now let’s put another container inside that vacuum with a different pressure. If we subtract one pressure from the other, we get the differential pressure. Differential pressure is the pressure difference between two systems. If we now connect these two containers together with a U shaped tube and put some heavy liquid in it, like mercury, we can directly measure the difference in pressures. If the pressures are the same, the liquid will be at the same height on both sides of the tube. If the pressure is greater in one side, it will push down on the liquid with more force and cause a difference in the height of the liquid on both sides of the tube. Measuring the difference in heights will tell us the difference in pressures.

Now let’s add a rock that’s big enough to have gravity that will hold onto gas, creating an atmosphere. With our containers next to the rock, instead of being in a vacuum, they are now in this atmosphere. The atmosphere will create a pressure from all the gas above our containers pressing down. Here on earth at sea level, this is about 15 pounds per square inch. If we eliminate one of the containers, the U shaped tube will now measure the pressure inside the remaining container relative to the atmosphere’s pressure.

This is known as gauge pressure. It is the pressure of one system relative to the current atmospheric pressure. For convenience, we set the zero point to atmospheric pressure.

In this context, vacuum and pressure are two sides of the same thing; they both measure the pressure of a gas relative to a known point, in this case atmospheric pressure. Vacuum is simply a pressure lower than atmospheric pressure, or said a different way, a negative pressure.

And this U shaped device is what our manometer will look like.

For this build you’ll need:

A flat mounting surface; I used some left over peg board but it could be a piece of wood or even cardboard if it’s rigid enough. It does need to be moderately long. The longer it is, the higher pressure you can test. I’m making mine about 6 feet long. If it's a lighter color the readings will be easier to make.

Clear tubing. The size isn’t critical; I used some with 3/8” inside diameter and 20’ long.

A means of attaching the tubing to the mounting surface. I used zip ties. If you use wood for the mounting surface, you could also use j-hooks or tubing clamps or anything else to attach the tubing.

Some sort of measuring stick. I used a yard stick but you could use a tape measure or even mark out your own lines with a ruler and marker.

A means of filling the tubing. I used a turkey baster but you could also use something with a small nozzle or funnel.

Some water and dark food coloring. I used blue for high contrast but you can use any color you want, or no color at all.

To make the manometer, start by attaching one end of the tubing close to a corner of the mounting surface. Continue to attach the tubing in a straight line next to the edge until you get close to the other end of the mounting surface. Then create a U in the tube and run it up the opposite edge of the mounting surface.

You should have a long bit of tubing left over. Leave this attached. It is where you will do your testing from.

Attach the apparatus so it’s hanging straight down.

Color the water so it’s fairly vibrant. Again, I used blue to get high contrast, but you can use any color you want.

Pour the water into the tube. The amount of water you use will impact the amount of pressure you can test. If you fill to the half way point of your height, then you have the maximum measurement for the size of your instrument. If everything is setup properly, the water will be at the same height on both sides of the tube.

Attach the ruler so it starts at the top of the water.

Your vacuum gauge is now ready to use.

And it is really easy to use. Simply apply a vacuum to the long end of the tube. The amount of vacuum pressure is indicated by reading how high the water comes up on the ruler and then multiply that number by two. This will give you a measurement in units called “inches of water." In this example I’ve got 7 inches of water.

If you wanted to get real fancy, you could make your own direct reading scale. Just mark off every half inch and label the marks with whole numbers starting with 0. Doing this, you don’t need to remember to multiply by two.

There are websites where you can convert this measurement to other pressure measurements such as inches of mercury or bars or pascals. If you do use other units of measurement, you could mark their values directly on the ruler for convenience.

Depending on your vacuum source, you may need to make an adapter for the tubing. For my shop vac I used a flexible connector and plug found in the ABS area of the plumbing aisle along with a pronged tubing to MPT brass fitting.

I’ll put this to use in a follow-up video for the shop vac system.

In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments below what you think about making your own instruments. Is it worth the effort to do it yourself or is it better to just buy something ready made? Am I being too cheap?

Finally, if this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. Through these videos I hope to inspire, educate and inform makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar materials. Thanks for letting me encourage your creativity. So subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.

Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!

How to quiet a shop vac

Description

In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows how he changed a normal shop vac into a central vac system for the shop.

Associate Links

• Flanged inlet receptacle
• PowerSwitch Tail II

Measuring the efficiency of a centralized shop vac system

Alternate DIY blast gate videos

Background video about the design evolution of the switch

For a written transcript, go to How to quiet a shop vac

Music and sound effects under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
http://freesound.org/people/musicmasta1/sounds/131385/
http://freesound.org/people/nothayama/sounds/172497/

Transcript

[Vacuum getting stuck between equipment]

[Vacuum tipping over]

[Loud vacuum]

In this episode of the House of Hacks I'm going to show how I made my shop vac easier to use.

[Introduction]

Hi makers, builders and do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.

In general I'm pretty bad at house cleaning. I tend to put off vacuuming and straightening up until it's unbearable. Around the workshop, this is exacerbated by the inconvenience of the shop vac. It has a tendency to tip over on its own cord. It's big and awkward in a cramped space. And it's uncomfortably loud.

I wanted a change based on some requirements: 1) minimal daily setup: it should basically always be ready to use and not take much to clean-up at the end of the day; 2) be convenient when using: I don't want to drag it all over the shop from one tool to another; 3) quiet: I want it to be really, really quiet; 4) inexpensive: I didn't want to spend a lot of money.

So to solve all these issues, I made it into a central vac system. At some point I'd like to get a real dust collection system, but right now that's outside both my money and space budgets.

Today I'll show: the box I built for the vacuum, the way I plumbed it in to the shop and how I turn it on and off. In a future episode I plan to show before and after measurements of both noise and vacuum efficiency and finally some future improvements I'd like to do.

Since noise was a big issue for me, I built this box to hold the vacuum and muffle its whine. In the junk pile from previous projects, I had some rigid insulation foam, softer foam rubber and some scrap 2x2. I figured this would work well as the main components.

I measured the shop vac dimensions, added a couple inches to each side for air circulation and the thickness of the foam.

This gave me the target outside dimensions. I went to the local home store and got two sheets of the cheapest 3/8" sheathing I could find. This is usually used under roofs and siding so it has a lot of visual imperfections, but it's good enough for this use and really cheap. When I got home I sliced up the sheathing and built the box by simply screwing it to the scrap 2x2. It's not pretty or square, but it does serve the purpose.

When I got the sheathing, I also picked up a piano hinge and some casters.

The casters I mounted on the bottom to make it easy to move around and of course I used the hinge for the door to give me easy access to the shop vac inside.

I mounted three spare electrical boxes in one corner on the inside. Two of the boxes go through holes to the back and the other points into the box. I'll get to the details of all that in a minute.

Next I cut up the foam and used spray adhesive to glue it to each of the sides.

Finally, I cut a hole in the side for the hose to run through and a hole in the top for the exhaust vent.

The electrical part has two components. A line voltage side and a low voltage side.

On the line voltage side, one of the boxes pointing to the outside has a male plug on it. This allows me to plug an extension cord into the box. This type of plug is convenient to use on projects like this but I couldn't find one at the normal places I typically get electrical parts. I ended up having to order this online. If you're looking for something like this, search for "flanged inlet receptacle". There's also an Amazon associate link in the description.

The box inside just has a normal duplex plug wired to the plug in the other box. The boxes are connected by a standard conduit connector. Combined, the two boxes provide a clean way to run power through the wall of the wooden box.

I plugged two things into the duplex outlet: a surplus low-voltage wall-wart power supply and this PowerSwitch Tail. The power supply provides low-voltage for the switch. The PowerSwitch Tail is basically a short extension cord with a relay built into it. When a low voltage is applied to these two connectors, it turns on the plug. This allows low voltage devices, like micro-controllers or other digital electronics to easily control line powered devices, like shop vacs.

I put another electrical box pointing to the outside for a remote switch. This is the low-voltage side. I installed a barrel style power connector in the electrical box pointing into the larger enclosure for the wall wart output to plug into.

On the outside of this box I installed a standard RJ-45 connector plate, like we used to use for those old-fashioned telephones. The connectors have four wires. The barrel power connector is attached to two of the connectors on the RJ-45 jack.

The other two lines of the RJ-45 run through the electrical box and go to the relay control connectors on the PowerSwitch Tail.

I then built a little switch box. It has an RJ-45 connector on the side and two switches: red and green. Inside it has a simple flip-flop circuit. Press the green button and the circuit turns on. Press the red button and the circuit turns off. A standard 4-conductor telephone cord connects the remote box on the side to the big box with the vacuum in it. I have a pretty long cord here that allows me to turn this on and off from anywhere in the shop. If you want more details of how this works, please leave a comment letting me know and I'll make another video about it. And if you're interested in the design evolution of this switch, there's a video on my second channel going into those details.

For plumbing, I used 2" black ABS drain pipe. This is pretty close to the diameter of the flexible hose that is standard on my vacuum. I ran a straight section across the ceiling with a couple sections running down in key areas in my workshop. I used sweeping connectors for smoother airflow and minimize places where dust can get caught. I held it all in place with perforated strapping tape and some screws. Most of the connections are just press fit. I didn't want to use cement in case I need to take it apart to clean it out, move it or do other sorts of maintenance. However, the sections that run down had a tendency to fall apart with just the friction fit so I put a short, self-taping screw in each one to hold them together. It's still pretty easy to remove the screw if I need to take them apart.

For the ports, I first looked at blast gates at the local wood working store. They were pretty expensive and not terribly well made. I really didn't think they were a very good value. I thought about making some blast gates of my own. I looked online and found some designs, but they were just more complicated to make than I wanted to deal with and I didn't have all the material I'd need in my scrap bin. So I made my own based on the design of the ports on the house's central vac system.

They're basically a hinged flap with a bit of foam to seal them and some magnets to hold them closed. They're epoxied to a standard plumbing fixture. The flex hose stays in with a press fit.

So that's pretty much it for the construction details. How well does it all work? I'll cover that in a future part 2 episode.

If you're interested in part 2 or other DIY type videos of this nature, click the Subscribe button and YouTube will let you know when they're released.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. I'd love to hear from you.

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