I’ve always loved Henry vacuum cleaners so I was pretty pleased when I found one dumped in the street. Even though he’s a bit worse for wear, visually at least, he works perfectly – despite the rain I found him it.

Replacement hoses aren’t very much but I thought it would be a good opportunity to design and print an adapter to attach my current vacuum’s hose, effectively reducing the cost to nothing.

I decided to start by finding the size of the thread on Henry’s nose. I measured the diameter of the thread and found it to be 60mm (although this wasn’t quite right in the end). So I opened Fusion 360 and created a 66mm circle and extruded it to the length of Henry’s snout, which was around 18mm.

Knowing nothing about threads, I decided to start guessing. I counted the number of turns, and tried to match it with the preset threads found in Fusion 360. On my third attempt I found the right size (ANSI Metric – M62x4).

Having no idea where to go from here I decided to consult a friend, and he suggested using a flange to seal the hose onto the vacuum – with the screw cap behind to clamp it shut. Flange it is.

First, I measured Henry’s snout and determined that the flange would need to be 55mm in diameter in order to cover the port, but also fit inside of the test cap I had printed. I measured the hose and used extrude to cut a 33.5mm hole, then created an extra rim to increase the area of contact with the hose.

All that was left, was to use extrude to cut a 35mm hole in the screw cap to allow it to move across the hose freely and the add some fins for extra grip. To make the fins I extruded a small rectangle 16mm up and gave it a quick chamfer. With one fin made I used the circular pattern tool to create another 5.

OK, lets try to assemble it! First, the screw cap goes on, and then the flange is pushed onto the hose.

It all fits perfectly! Even with the flange only push fitted it is secure enough to pull around, but if it does eventually pull free I’ll probably add a few drops of cyanoacrylate glue.

Overall I’m pleased with how this project turned out. Even though I’ve designed a few random things, this is my first “proper” functional project.

Thingiverse Link