Shop Vacs are essential in the workshop, but sometimes the casters seem to have a mind of their own. How about using the vacuum’s discharge air to make it obediently float behind you? That’s exactly what maker Bill Wells did, and his how-to appears on the pages of MAKE Volume 29. Bill essentially took off the wheels, attached the vacuum to a hover deck made of MDF, installed an additional hover hose to direct the discharge air, and added a hover skirt made from old exercise mat foam. Check out the full mod on Make: Projects. Build one and never be annoyed with those casters again.
From the pages of MAKE Volume 29:
We have the technology (to quote The Six Million Dollar Man), but commercial tools for exploring, assisting, and augmenting our bodies really can approach a price tag of $6 million. Medical and assistive tech manufacturers must pay not just for R&D, but for expensive clinical trials, regulatory compliance, and liability — and doesn’t help with low pricing that these devices are typically paid for through insurance, rather than purchased directly. But many gadgets that restore people’s abilities or enable new “superpowers” are surprisingly easy to make, and for tiny fractions of the costs of off-the-shelf equivalents. MAKE Volume 29, the “DIY Superhuman” issue, explains how.
ADVERTISEMENT
