Need a corrugated flexible hose for your CNC machine? You could buy one… or you could make your own using tape and ketchup bottles!

One of our tipsters stumbled upon a very interesting hack on a Russian 3D Modeling website that sells 3D models ready to be CNC machined. They have a few articles on CNC machines, and this is one of them. An ingenious way of making your own flexible hose — in this case, used as a vacuum return on the CNC machine.

It’s pretty simple, although we would expect the labor involved quickly outweighs the cost of some cheap hose — but this is recycling so hey! You start by finding a source of cylindrical plastic containers, like ketchup bottles. You then cut a never-ending ribbon from said bottles, and then using a cylindrical template (like a can of spray paint), wrap packing tape, sticky side out, around the template. Now wrap your ribbon around the template, slightly spaced, and then cover the outside in tape as well. A one liter bottle of ketchup will make approximately a half meter of corrugated hosing. It’s not hard to continue doing this by sliding the hose off the can, and wrapping more ribbon and tape in place.

Now that’s a hack.

[Thanks Michael!]