The idea for the ReCycle Vac came from a real problem in our school robotics workshop: cleanup was eating into build time, and we were losing money because usable parts got tossed when they were mixed into dust, hair, and debris. So we wanted a faster way to clean while saving the parts instead of throwing everything away.

My solution was a simple, add-on attachment for a shop vacuum that separates what you actually want to keep from what should be filtered out. I designed a replaceable mesh system to prevent hardware from getting sucked into the vacuum, and added magnets to capture ferrous parts while the vacuum cleaned dust off everything else. Through multiple iterations and side-by-side testing of different shapes and materials, I landed on a flat-base design that picked up the most parts efficiently.