Vacuum hose adapter

myminifactory

I was building a cabinet for my 3D printer and I needed to use my sander. I didn't want to get fine dust everywhere, so I wanted to hook it to my vacuum, but I had lost the adapter to go from the vacuum hose to the sander. I printed a new one that would thread onto the vacuum hose to entirely skip the adapter chain it would have required originally. This significantly improved the hose flexibility while I was sanding. Originally, I was going to create an adapter that would go from the original vacuum hose fitting to the sander.  The total adapter chain would have ended up being about 6 inches long in this case.  Since the adapters are all rigid, it would have really gotten in my way to have 6 inches of rigid plastic between the sander and the flexible hose. I realized that the first vacuum hose fitting threaded on the flexible hose with a reverse thread.  I had just figured out how to make threads in Solidworks, so I was able to make the thread pretty quickly.   I knew the part would have significant stress on it as it dragged the relatively heavy vacuum hose back and forth as I sanded, so I printed it with solid infill.  Ultimately, the entire adapter chain ended up being about 2 inches, so I ended up with a much better design.