I have a Nilfisk hand vacuum cleaner that is great! The only problem with it is that it does not come with any attachment that has a wide sucking pattern. Luckily I have a 3D printer so I can easily solve this. I made design in Fusion 360. To not waste time and plastic, the first thing I did was to print a short test pice of the side attaching to the vacuum cleaner so I could make sure that it is a snug fit. The first piece was very har to get in to the hole due to the “elephant’s foot” on the first print layer. I solved this by putting a 0.3 mm chamfer on the outside edge. After this adjustment, it fit perfectly.
I printed my design standing up like shown in the first picture. I chose this orientation because I thought that it was a smaller chance that it would fall over. However, I think the print would work without support in the other orientation, so maybe it is better anyways. To get a professional looking result I printed it with a 0.08 mm layer height and it took around 3.5 hours to print. It always impresses me how good prints look with such a small layer height. It actually gets hard to tell that they are 3D printed.
The finished print came out looking good. As shown in the second picture, the fit between the vacuum cleaner and the attachment is very good and you cannot feel any air leaking. The only thing keeping it from looking perfect is the supports since they leave marks on the surface. If I ever were to sell this design I would have to make sure to get rid of the supports somehow. One way to do this could be to remove the bend in the pipe. I put the bend in to make it more comforatable to use, but a similar effect could be had by just cutting the opening at the end at an angle.
The function of the attachment is just like a wanted. The sucking power is sufficient and it works over the whole width. It works great on textiles, like my sofa and carpets. I am excited to try it out on my car seats. since it is just made of hard plastic it feels a littel rough to use on hard surface, like the floor or a table. (However to be fair, it is as rough as using the vacuum cleaner wothout an attachment.) To make it feel a little smoother on hard surfaces, some kind of fabric could be glued to the edge of the opening. This would probably make it harder to use on fabric surfaces though. Wheels could also be added to the end. This would make it run smoothly over both soft and hard surfaces. But then hairs and other long strands could get stuck in the wheels. For now i am happy with the design.
