Why are confetti pieces clogging in my modified confetti blower?

[nikola92]

Hello to all the physics folks. I have a question which I think will be a simple one for you guys.
I bought these mini confetti blowers for our church. They suck confetti, which are mainly small shiny rectangular pieces or some rose shaped paper-like material pieces, and blow them to the air.
So ours came with a hose setup to suck the confetti:

I decided to modify it to suck confetti from inside a box like these ones do:

Here's a sketch of how it looks now with the box I made.

What's happening though, the confetti pieces after few seconds form a clog where the box connects with the tube.

If I push that clog with my hand, the confetti is sucked in and flows through the tubes and is blown just fine.

I modified my box from the inside like so, but it didn't change anything.

->

Someone unlike me who actually understands why that is happening, can you explain why clog happens and how would you suggest me to modify my box shape to fix this?Not that the hose setup is bad, it just looks like a modified vacuum cleaner like that and not very pretty to have in ceremonies and we still need a box to put the confetti pieces and the hose into suck the confetti so I thought I could just have the box on the machine itself and make it easier to handle.

 

[jack action]

I would put a tube that connects directly outside the box (air with no confetti) and align the other end at the inlet tube in the box. This tube should be about half the diameter of the inlet tube and have no bends preferably. It should align with the upper part of the inlet tube and some testing should be done to define if its end should coincide with the end of the inlet tube or be a little inside or outside the inlet tube.

This should make sure that the inlet tube is never clogged by keeping the air moving; Creating some turbulence to help mix the confetti with the air. It should act like leaving the hose on the floor with confetti lying in front of the inlet: The air will always be able to get in the upper part of the hose, sucking in the top layer of confetti.

I saw in an other forum that you said:

Planters, I tried to find any photos / manuals / videos of blowers using boxes, but only found two photos and a video, which aren't very clear but seems like nothing special is in these boxes.

But if you look carefully in the video you linked in that post (at time = 1:00), you'll notice that the operator carefully unblocks the inlet tube before starting the machine. Because your box is angled, this is difficult for you to do but the modification I propose should do something similar.

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[nikola92]

I would put a tube that connects directly outside the box (air with no confetti) and align the other end at the inlet tube in the box. This tube should be about half the diameter of the inlet tube and have no bends preferably. It should align with the upper part of the inlet tube and some testing should be done to define if its end should coincide with the end of the inlet tube or be a little inside or outside the inlet tube.

This should make sure that the inlet tube is never clogged by keeping the air moving; Creating some turbulence to help mix the confetti with the air.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're suggesting.

 

[jack action]

Does this drawing help?