A little while ago, I purchased a handheld airblower. It is the kind of thing often used for dusting electronics and I preferred the idea of a rechargeable one as opposed to the aerosol type. I think it will be more sustainable and the aerosol models can sometimes spit condensed liquid onto your devices!

It has been great but then I recently discovered another use for it. It blows air out of the nozzle at the front but that means it sucks air in from the inlet at the back. There is a model on Printables that creates an additional nozzle so you can get a reasonable vacuum seal on things like filament storage bags. It won’t be as good as a dedicated vacuum pump but it works pretty well.

I also want to use it in the kitchen so I’ve designed and printed my own extension piece. This makes the nozzle about twice as long and also adds a mesh at the end. That allows it to be poked into bags more easily and gives some protection against sucking up unwanted contaminants into the blower. I haven’t decided whether to publish my design yet in case it does cause problems but I’ll consider it after more testing.

The new design trick for me was using a part set to have no top or bottom surfaces, which I added in the slicer rather than in building the base model. That means I didn’t have to design a fine mesh and hope it printed okay but, instead, I’m simply exposing the infill (for which I selected a simple grid).