Hygienic vaccum bag adapter (using IKEA SÖTVATTEN)

Using a common vacuum cleaner to evacuate air form a storage bag is not a new idea. But dealing with fresh food, the nozzle needs to be hygienically clean in order not to pollute the food. I read that both PLA and PETG are food safe in principle, but bacteria can and will grow in micro cracks in the surface of our printed things.

IKEA has apparently understood this problem and is supplying mankind with disposable food safe suction nozzles under the name SÖTVATTEN. Most people don't get that and use these nozzles as drinking straws, which works as well of course.

In order to bring these nozzles to their originally intended use case, I have designed and printed the necessary adapter to a 1.25 inch (31.7mm) vacuum cleaner hose.

I have tested the design and it works well. Just push the SÖTVATTEN deep into the bag and pull it out while the vacuum cleaner is turned on. Quickly close the bag after the nozzle has completely left the bag. It is not difficult to preserve basically all of the vacuum that was created earlier. The only disappointment were my zipper bags, which slowly but surely lost the vacuum over several minutes after I closed them. But that is another story.

Now enough about healthy food. What most of us really care for, is to keep our printing filament dry to get perfect prints. So I have of course also tested this use case with comparable results (see picture).

Print instructions

Printer Brand: Prusa

Printer: I3 MK3S

Rafts: Yes

Supports: No

Resolution: 0,15mm

Infill: 100%

Filament: DasFilament.de PETG Silver grey

Notes:

PETG shrinks slightly (I typically see around 1%-1.5%), so in order to make it fit to the tight tolerances of the vacuum cleaner hose of 31.7mm diameter, I had to add 0.3mm to the diameter of the print. That gives me a perfect fit. If you print this in PLA, or your slicer or printer compensates the expected shrinking of the material, you might end up with a slightly too large diameter. So your hose might not hold very strongly on the adapter.