parametric hose adapter

thingiverse

I needed an adapter that would enable me to connect my dust collector (https://www.thingiverse.com/make:724045) to my Dewalt 735x Planer. The connection on the planer did not fit the hose that came with my Ridgid Vac, so I designed the adapter with two female ends to match the planer and the hose. To create this adapter, I utilized CadQuery (https://github.com/dcowden/cadquery or https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery) and FreeCAD. The diameters, lengths, and thicknesses are all adjustable using these tools. The adapter features tapered connections at each end, which are designed to fit the slightly tapered hose and planer connection. Despite being tapered, they still fit snugly even if the diameters are off by a little bit. This is because any error in diameter only affects how far the hoses seat into the adapter. The taper I used was 1/20 (1mm change in diameter per 20mm of length - a very slight taper). While the taper can overcome differences in diameters, I wanted to keep the adapter short, so I needed to conduct a few tests to get the depth of insertion right (0.2mm change in diameter changed ~10-15mm depth of insertion). The CadQuery file allows users to modify the sizes and print test rings (3.5mm deep) to verify the size and how far it will seat. The test rings only took ~8 minutes to print. I also made the wall thickness adjustable, and I used 1.6mm. In Cura, I set the line-width of 0.4mm and wall thickness of 0.8mm. This way, there is just an outer and inner wall (no infill). However, I find that Cura does not use nice continuous lines between the inner and outer walls; instead, it fills the space with lots of small lines. If you want a thicker adapter, I would suggest adjusting the wall thickness setting to avoid this (e.g., to make a 2.4mm thick adapter, adjust the wall in the CadQuery file to 2.4 and then use a wall thickness of 1.2mm in Cura). If you want to try CadQuery, I think FreeCAD is the easiest way. Once you have FreeCAD installed, you should be able to install CadQuery inside FreeCAD through their built-in addon manager. If you do not want to mess with CadQuery or FreeCAD, if you leave a comment or message me, I can create and upload a different sized STL file.