One more solder fume extractor

[babysitter]

I also want to get rid of the soldering fumes without reducing solder consumption, too.

A lateral channel blower that I used to quick-start barbeque fires now has settled under my bench, with tubing intended for vacuum cleaner guiding most fumes away from my nose and out of the window.

Pictures

The main components are the blower hanging under my desk, big tubing leading out of the window, a small (not yet connected) garden hose leading to the solder iron stand und a big nozzle mounted on a desk lamp stand from scrapheap.


Zipties connect the garden hose to the stand. A hood is still required to direct fumes to the sucker. Was the last idea for addition, still missing a Tee to connect to the low pressure side of the blower.

The scrap desk lamp stand was modified with some heavy iron plates glued in the hollow foot to prevent tipping. The wastewater piping tee will be replaced by a rounded elbow for more laminar flow and smaller size. Also, I will look out for one of those "vuvuzela" horns that german soccer fans like so much as inlet nozzle. I figure it might work better than this.

The main engine. Candidate for noise reduction!


The last hose can go outside thru the partly-open window.

Even when I intend to blow to the outside, I want to set up a filter box for activated charcoal and maybe a second HEPA stage.

[SeanB]

Silencing a side channel pump is hard, they are very noisy, and very little, aside from a tuned length stub on inlet and outlet, will help. Simplest filter is to go to the auto parts store and look for a car air inlet filter, or the scrapyard and get one complete for eg Volkswagen golf/seat/audi/skoda that has an inlet pipe, a box with the flat filter unit in it and an exhaust pipe. Then you place one on the inlet and the exhaust near the pump, which will reduce the noise.

With a larger one that was used on a koi pond the simplest solution was a large Donaldson air filter unit, intended for a ERF truck engine, placed on the inlet side, complete with the primary and secondary filter units, drain valve and clogging indicator. When it finally clogged up with dirt it was easy to tell from the very loud whine from the pump sucking down to 0.3bar