Engineering Solutions to Problems that shouldn't exist

My dad and I installed a new dryer exhaust vent in my house a little while ago. When we did we also installed a inline lint catcher that we purchased from ECCO in Calgary. It is a simple device, all sheet metal box with a hole in the top and a hole in the bottom. The lid comes out the side and has attached to it a diagonal screen. We thought it would be great. It turns out, it wasn't.

The flaw of this simple design was that the pressure of the exhaust air is enough to actually blow the door open with the result being a lot of warm air in the room, and more importantly... LINT!!!! Lint on the walls, lint on the floor jousts, lint on the pipes, and a fine layer of lint bloody everywhere. This is a pretty big design flaw. There is no mechanism to hold the door to the lint catcher in place whatsoever. Later after use, the hot air of the exhaust wrapped the little non functional plastic window and lint would blow out of there. That is where the duct tape is on the center of mass.

The temporary fix for the longest while was to have a series of rubber bands tied together wrapped around the door and the pipe to hold it tight-ish. It leaked air and LINT but it was meant to be temporary. So recently a year and a half later I have finally fixed it!

I tried to find a new one to replace it and either couldn't find anything, or only found the same one. In a fit of rage at my ineffectual search I went to the hardware store with a small sembelence of plan in mind. I bought four M4 bolts, with matching washers and nylock nuts. A double magnet door latch for cabinets, and lastly some weather striping. All this material came out to about $8.00.

As per the above picture I bolted the magnets on either side of the box so when the lid is on it is held in place by science!!!! tested it with the dryer on and wouldn't you know it, it didn't move.

As per this picture I put the weather stripping all around the outer edge of the inside of the lid. It should be noted that the lid is oversized relative to the box, so the stripping sits a few mils from the box. This is a redundancy really but now there is only a slight feeling of a small amount of warm air coming from a few of the corners of the lid, but no LINT.

The part that bugs me is that the materials are cheap and easy to get. The build process isn't that much harder, a few holes, tighten some bolts, cut some stripping. It annoys me that the company I bought the product from couldn't take the time to make the product work, instead of making one that is really good at dispersing LINT!!!!!