Central Air Vent Redirector

With the warmer season approaching for my location, we needed something to redirect the cool air from our central air conditioning up into the bed room and keep it from sliding under our bed straight to the return duct (cool air sinks). Last season I made a quick and dirty item with just cardboard. This year I wanted something a little better that would more gently redirect the air for less losses to turbulence.

I came up with these end caps that will hold a piece of standard single wall cardboard that is around 0.12in/3mm thick (technically it's actually corrugated paper, but everyone calls it cardboard). These end caps can hold themselves up if the vent is wall mounted and is right on the floor, but I built in magnet holes for 18mmx5mm ceramic magnets in case they are needed.

One great thing of this design is that the length is only limited to how wide your cardboard is. I am working with a 6x14in air vent. I cut a piece of cardboard just under 8.25in/210mm by about 15in/380mm to accommodate the distance the cardboard recesses into the end caps. To help the cardboard bend I marked out 1in/25.4mm lines parallel to the long axis and then used a ruler to fold along these lines. I fully recommend this folding before trying to insert into the ends.

Once you have dry fitted the unit to your vent and adjusted your width as needed, I hot glued my cardboard to the end caps for structure and so they don't fall apart if bumped.

I tried to design the part to use commodity materials, accommodate a wide range of use cases, and need no support material. I hope this is helpful to others!