VC018 Air Duster Storage box

TLDR: A case to store your air duster with all its bits and bobs.

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Anyone who's seen the air duster front plate mod I published yesterday will probably have guessed this one was coming!

After modifying my air duster, I now had a load of extra nozzles (and, for some reason, an old toothbrush!). Trying to fit it all in the duster's tatty cardboard box wasn't really working out. So I quickly designed one of my favourite slidey-lid type boxes to keep it all in.

Job done (or so I thought). It all looked good, so I closed the lid and started to put the box away. But as I crossed the room, I heard the motor start up by itself. Ghosts?! Aliens?! Naaah, there was no mystery involved: The duster was free to move around inside the box, and this allowed the power button to knock against the inner divider (and yes; I did kick myself!).

So it was clear I needed something to keep the tool from moving around. Ideally, the “something” would have been an integral part of the box. But since the box had already been printed out, an additional shaped insert was the only real answer. I took a few measurements of the air duster (spoiler; not enough!), and quickly drew and printed a design.

The print looked great and, so long as it remained outside of the box, it fit the tool like a glove. I tried the empty insert in the box, and it also seemed a perfect fit. But when I put both in the box together, I could see the back of the box bulging outwards on one side. Only by a couple of millimetres, to be sure. But something was awry, and I just couldn't live with it. So I set about figuring out what the trouble was.

After a few minutes, I kicked myself for a second time. In my enthusiasm to get the shaped insert designed, I'd failed to spot a slight taper on the motor housing. It's barely a couple of millimetres, and almost invisible to the naked eye. But it's there, and it made a BIG difference. It pushed the insert outwards, which in turn pushed the box out. Blast! The moral of the story, folks, is to measure both ends of a cylinder.

In the end I had to re-design the entire insert part from scratch. I didn't want to, but every time I tried to bring the taper into my existing CAD drawing, it produced errors elsewhere. I could probably have worked through all the sketches one by one to resolve the issue. But it started getting time-consuming, and it was just easier to start afresh. Fortunately the second version was perfect, and that's what you see here.

I printed the box and lid in PETG, at 0.2 layer height, using standard Bambu settings. To keep the weight of the shaped insert down, I tried lightning infill for the first time and was duly impressed (I don't know who Julie is, and you'll have to ask her yourself). It's perfect for printing lightweight parts where strength isn't vital.

The printed insert is a lovely tight fit into the box, and my tool drops in perfectly. What more could I ask for?!!

As always, I've provided .stl, and .step files, along with the .3mf files I used on my Bambu Labs X1-C. The FreeCAD file is also included for those who want to modify or improve.

So there you are, a nice box to keep the air duster from getting dusty. All I need now is a box to keep the box in, so that that won't get dirty! But then I'd also need a box to keep… Never mind!

Happy printing!