Making vacuum hose adapters

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

While cutting up vacuum extension wands for this is expedient, it’s a bit problematic given that Shop Vac recently filed for bankruptcy, was bought at the last minute, and production hasn’t caught up.

I need a receptacle for the Sweepy 2.0 dust fitting — one option would be to purchase one from Woodcraft, but Carbide 3D sells blocks of HDPE:

HDPE Sheet 3 x 5 x 1.5" (Qty 3)

which looks to be just barely big enough for things to fit.

Measuring the hose fitting I get a diameter of ~63.5mm — offsetting that twice we arrive at:

which it is pretty straight-forward to render toolpaths for:

but this thickness stock raises the concern of rubbing and tool engagement, so we add some geometry to take this into account and rework the toolpaths to follow best practices.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

The first consideration is the endmill to be used. The best endmills for plastic include single flute tools such as:

#278Z .25" Single Flute ZrN

which has a cutting length sufficient for our purposes

So, we offset from the perimeters by that endmill diameter plus 10% or so:

Select the inner paths and assign a pocket down to tab depth (1mm):

Select the geometry for the outer wall (not the flange at the bottom) and the offset path from the flange and assign a pocket down to the height of the flange:

Then select the flange and its offset geometry and make a pocket from there down to tab height:

Lastly assign paths with tabs to finish cutting the parts out:

and

Attached.

2_5 hose adapter.c2d (183.5 KB)

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Cutting went well:

(except for the extra vacuuming the open sides of the cut engendered)

and the fit is quite secure: