Improvements to shop vacuum cleaners

"Shop vacs" are vacuum cleaners designed to be used outdoors or in work shops. Generally, shop vacs collect debris in a large dust bin instead of in a dust bag. Current designs for these machines have several defects.

To vacuum up debris without clogging the pick-up device, the diameter of the pick-up is fairly large, so these vacuum cleaners have less suction than an household vacuum cleaner of the same horsepower. They do not do a good job of pulling dirt out of cracks and crevices.

The motor of these machines is usually built into the lid of the dust bin. This makes the vacuum cleaner top heavy and it is easy to tip it over.

The machines use a paper filter that does not do a good job of removing dust. The exhaust port ot many designs points straight up as if it were intended to throw dust up into the air. The paper filter must be removed for vacuuming wet material. (Most shop vacs are "wet/dry" vacuum cleaners, meaning that they can vacuum wet material.)


Since shop vacs are often kept in a garage they are the natural tool for vacuuming cars. However the pick-up head on a typical shop vac is not effective in picking up debris from the carpet in cars, which tends to grab debris and hold it. Pick-ups with rotating brushes are effective in vacuuming such carpet but it is not common to find such attachments for shop vacs. Also, such attachments are usually to large to fit into many of small cavities in the interior of cars, such as under seats, around brake pedals, etc.

It would be interesting to investigate the following improvements in current designs.

1. Put the motor underneath the dust bin. This would improve the balance of the shop vac. Make the dust bin detachable. It is necessary to empty the dust bin periodically. It would easier to empty a detached dust bin by itself that to empty the dust bin on current designs where the base and wheels of the unit remain attached to the dust bin.

2. Investigate whether part of the exhaust could be diverted to blow out dust from crevices. For example, the unit might have dual hoses and some kind of pick-up head where a stream of air blew out at one place to sitr up dirt and air was sucked back into another opening to pick up the debris.

3. Design a narrow pick-up head that uses a small rotary brush about the size of a golf ball. The function of this brush would be to loosen debris from the carpet of cars.