Dyson DC14 Extra Tool Storage by Cargy

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

So many people throw out these cleaners as "useless", when 90% of the time there's nothing wrong with the machine, and it's simply down to owner abuse or lack of maintenance. As a result, I have three different Dysons in my household - two of them used full-time as workshop vacs.
My favourite one lives indoors with me: It's a (dusty - see photos!) DC14 model, and I only use it for vacuuming my flat. It's got excellent tool storage for all the bits that came with it. But, over time, I've collected a couple of extra tools I like to use and, up till now, these have had to be carried from room to room with me when cleaning.
Inevitably I'd often forget, and find that the tool I wanted was still in the other room! It was about time I did something about it.
Dyson's already used all the best places to keep standard the bits and bobs, and I struggled to find anywhere that was A) convenient, and B) didn't get in the way. But, whilst emptying the bin the other day, I noticed there was enough room to get a cable tie around the back of the bin without fouling. So the idea quickly condensed to become a simple tool holder designed to sit on the bin, held in place with a couple of large cable ties.
The first test piece was swiftly printed, and it worked like a charm. But I wasn't keen on the way the cable tie passed over the release plunger for emptying the bin. It wasn't causing a problem as such, but I just wasn't comfortable with the way the edge of the brittle plastic was carrying the cable tie load.
Forutnately, there was enough room to accomodate a couple of curved bridging ramps to guide the cable tie over this area, so I drew 'em up and printed them: Perfect!
If you choose to use use these pieces, print them with the small, flat, face on the print bed and you won't need support.
Finally, I could have gotten away with using two long cable ties. But in the end I felt that the clip mechanism of the ties would be useful in stopping the holders from slipping too much. So I chose to use two shorter ties, in conjunction with a single long one, to give me two of these clips just where I wanted them. You may find a little double-sided tape comes in handy too, but I didn't have any around.
I found the best height for the cable ties is where the "max" marking is on the bin. You'll wnat it tight, but not so tight it cracks the bin itself.
So I can now vac around the house, to my heart's content, without constantly chasing the other tools. In fact, when I vacuum, you really can't see me for dust!
P.S. A small warning tale
The observant amongst you will notice that my print shows signs of bad under-extrusion.
It's not a fault in the design. It turns out that the unscrupulous Chinese (yes, I found that out afterwards too. D'oh!) supplier of my filament had sold out of PLA, so considered it perfectly reasonable to place a PLA sticker on a reel of ABS and ship it out as if it was the same thing!
Printing ABS at PLA temps has (amongst other things) the result you see in the picture. Annoyingly, I spent hours messing with print settings and nozzles before figuring out what the problem was. With hindsight, my nose told me from the start, but I wasn't paying attention!
No surprise that the supplier is no longer an eBay seller, and has no doubt "phoenixed" into a new vendor.