Air Compressor Intake Filter

thingiverse

1/2" NPT Male threaded holder for a foam air intake filter for small air compressors. Instructions I dropped a box yesterday and as luck would have it i managed to snap the air intake filter off of my 5 gal pancake air compressor that was sitting on the floor below me. My compressor is a cheap made in china unit but has served me quite well, it uses washable and reuseable foam air intake filters, the kind you wash out then lightly oil to trap dust and dirt from going into the compressor. Its a standard 1/2" NPT thread and i could have bought one locally to replace it but they wanted $15 for a one time use disposable filter! So i designed a replacement to keep using the foam inserts that i already had. If your compressor has a different type you could easily cut a piece of thick foam filter material commonly sold for AC units and layer it up for the correct thickness to create a very cheap and reuseable filter using this design. Print the base with support, the top just print normally without raft, unless your printer doesnt have a HBP. The top, aka lid, is a good snap fit into the base. I tried one with threads but it kept vibrating out with the compressor running, the snap fit lid hasn't fell off yet. The original design had only a few large holes, i used eight smaller holes in the lid, it doesn't restrict it too much, compressor filling time is the same, but the side effect is its much quieter with less air noise. Most compressors have a 1/2" NPT so this should work on many different makes and models but i wouldn't use it on anything other then the small 5 gallong or less units, the larger ones need more air flow and a larger filter. It could easily be resized and a larger filter element made. If you don't want to be able to wash and reuse a couple drops of super glue around the lip of the lid before assembly would make it permanent and disposable if you have and problems with the lid coming off. Its cheap to print another!