Sometimes something is remarkable not for its content, but for its size. A ball of yarn isn’t exciting for example, unless it’s a giant ball of yarn. At the other end of the scale writing your name is a quotidian event, but put it on a grain of rice and that’s ten bucks at the mall. [Toby Bateson] has been making vacuum cleaners since he was 8 years old — and he looks considerably older than that now. In of itself that’s not a big deal, but his machines are tiny. In fact, he has the Guinness Book of World Records entry for the smallest vacuum cleaner. His latest exploit? A vacuum in an Altoid’s tin!
Electronically, this is just a switch, a battery, and a motor. But if you are looking for a Dremel tool project, you are in luck. Check out the video of the diminutive device, below. Besides the Altoids tin, there is a metal pipe and some bits of a cut-up soda can.
If you are in the United States, you might be unsure about one of the items in the bill of materials. A punnet is one of those little plastic baskets that things like strawberries or tomatoes are in at the grocery store.
We were trying to think of what we would add to this project, but we got nothing. It doesn’t really need any LEDs and a microcontroller with an Internet connection would be overkill. Maybe a 555 could give you a high and low setting with some PWM for the motor.
Perhaps this could be the start of a tiny robot vacuum. If you think bigger is better, there’s always this Dyson clone.
it does not suck
“if you are looking for a Dremel tool project” – now there’s an idea, a mini-vac near the end to suck up the dust & filings etc.
Can actually be a really handy bench tool for cleaning precision cleaning for up wire snips etc without also sucking up nearby components as well. A 3d printed version would be pretty cool
A desktop vacuum robot for automatically cleaning up the desk while a programmer is on a coffee break could certainly turn some heads.
Or this: a robot arm that picks up your tools and stuff you’ve and puts them back in their correct place! And it could have a vacuum attachment to clean the desk too!
You’ve used*
The appropriate additions are obvious: attachments! How about a tiny hose, with an itty-bitty nozzle, to get into those tiny spaces between your keyboard keys
Don’t forget a weird shaped bit no one is quite sure what it’s for!
Nice work! Very rudimentary and to the point, but shows how vacuum cleaner really works.
The microcontroller and wifi/bluetooth connection to the internet would be for the other Altoids tin, which contains the motors and wheels necessary to make it into a micro-Roomba.
Needs more ESP8266s!
That sucks. And I mean in a good way! Great job
Is it light enought to get hauled around my place by my drone?
I predict that this Hackaday post will be repeated in the future.