I've been wanting a vacuum bag system for quite a while, but the price has always put me off. $450 for a decent one from Rockler... Yikes. I saw this refrigerant vacuum pump at Harbor Freight and knew I was on to something:
http://www.harborfre...tors-96677.html
My wife bought these clothing storage bags a few years ago, in an attempt to declutter her closet:
http://www.bedbathan...sp?SKU=16698563
With those two pieces, and my existing compressor making the three major components, I dug through my box of miscellaneous fittings and came up with this contraption:
IIRC, it's comprised of a 1/2" to 3/8" reducer, a 3/8" ball valve, a 3/8" to 1/4" reducer and a quick disconnect. The 1/2" to 3/8" reducer fit into the vacuum port of the bag perfectly, so it just needed some epoxy to glue it in.
I also put a quick disconnect on the vac pump:
After a couple promising test runs, I tried it for real:
The bag was punctured where it was going over the sharp edges in the roughed-out control cavity, so I patched it up with some packing tape and gave it another go; this time with some protection. I used thin shelf lining foam rubber, since it's what I had lying around, and placed a square of wood over the control cavity opening:
The bag held vacuum overnight with no leaks at all, and worked a treat.