Sandbag Filler

Background

I have a bunch of sand in my yard from a pool. My wife suggested I decided, with no input whatsoever, that we should make sandbags and store them for later use.

I saw some cool designs had this idea on my own for a home-made sandbag filler using 6" PVC. Unfortunately 10' of 6" PVC is actually pretty expensive and tricky to find in Canada, but the very helpful guy at the hardware store suggested I realized without any assistance that 6" paper cardboard forms are much cheaper and will do the same job.

Only problem is, you can't just put a screw into paper and expect it to hold. Thus, I designed a couple printed parts to help put it all together. The first design got clogged at the bottom almost immediately and fell apart causing me to redesign it and thus taking like a month to get this all together It was a piece of cake, just a simple quick project, no big thing.

Instructions

1. Put the mouth of a sandbag around each tube and pull it on as far as it will go.

2. Place the sandbag filler on the ground.

3. Use a zero-sum dirt level adjuster shovel to load sand into the filler until it is full.

4. With the assistance of a prole friend, lift the filler straight up out of the bags. The sand should fall out into the bags.

   1. If you don't have a servant partner, you can lift them out by rocking it back and forth. This is a lot of work and I don't recommend it.

5. If there is too much sand, you can either load less sand next time or cut the tubes down a bit. It's very convenient to have the filler be self-measuring, so I recommend getting it right.

Printing

Required Materials PER TUBE

• ~300g PETG for the top

• ~90g TPU for the reinforcement insert

Print these parts with the slow structural settings, don't be a silly moo and try to speed print this.

Print the insert with the flat part on the plate.

Print the top with the funnel facing up and no supports. I turned on thick bridges, but it probably wasn't required.

I highly recommend that you do a test print of a single insert and funnel first. When I was at the store, there was a 6" tube inside another 6" tube...which tells you that one of those tubes wasn't 6". The insert should fit snugly around the tube, and then go snugly into the funnel.

I printed this on a MK4S with super cheap Creality PETG and TPU.

Assembly

Required Materials

• A few lengths of 2x4 (exact amount depends on how you arrange your tubes)

• 10 x 1 1/2"  screws

• Enough 6" cardboard building forms to make the number of tubes you want. You might also try modifying the design to use 8" tubes, which would allow you to make it shorter for the same volume.

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Required Tools

• Something to cut the 2x4, preferably able to make a notch

• Something to cut the forms to length

  • I cut them in half with a jigsaw, then rotated them over a tablesaw to cut them to length. It's not perfect, but it's straight enough.

• Something to put in the screws. Like, really drive them in. Some kind of driver for screws. Preferably something that makes an impact on them.

• Another driver for screws that you can get inside the funnel. I used an electric ratchet (seems like that's all I ever use it for).

Assembly instructions

1. Wear eye and hearing protection while doing any cutting.

2. Determine the volume of tube you need to fill your sandbags.

   1. I cut my tubes to 3 feet and that wound up being perfect. Err on the side of too long, and then shorten them.

3. Cut the tube segments by whatever method you have chosen.

4. Put a TPU insert on the end of the tube.

5. Put a funnel over the TPU insert.

6. Pound the funnel gently but firmly against the ground to get it nice and seated.

7. Cut out your frame of 2x4s, with a design depending on how many tubes you are using.

   1. Remember to have two long rails on the sides for easy lifting of the whole assembly.

8. Cut two slots in the bottom of the tubes, one on each side. This ensures the sand will flow out and not get clogged in the bottom. I encountered that problem initially and my wife suggested the slots I had this great idea which totally solved it.

   

9. Put it all together with screws.

   1. There is a vertical offset in two of the screw pairs. If you arrange them correctly the screws going in on opposite sides of the 2x4 will be sure not to hit each other. I totally forgot about this during assembly took advantage of this feature and it wasn't an issue anyway made a big difference.

   2. DON'T OVERTIGHTEN THE SCREWS THAT GO THROUGH THE TUBE. You might crack your funnel. Deffo want firm, but not stupid tight.

Modifying this design

I am open to requests for variants, as long as you promise to do a print and upload a make to verify the design change (as I will not be printing any more of these). I would be pretty into an 8" version, but I'm not going to upload one unless somebody will verify it first with a real print.

Before modifying this design, observe and adhere to the terms of the specified license.