cigarette smoke grabber for solder smoke?

Suction is subject to inverse-square rules - inasmuch as it decays by the s quare of the distance between the source (smoke) and the suction. You will note that the picture shows the cigarette directly below the fan. At your s oldering station, unless you position the fan within a very few (less than

2) inches from the soldering head - as the solder is applied - it will do n othing useful. As to poking holes in plastic with hot nails - same issue.

There are these (attachments to common extraction systems):

that I am sure you could rig up from some flexible hose and either a vacuum cleaner (noisy) or a fairly powerful muffin-fan. This could be directed to the source of the smoke and either run outside, or into a charcoal filter arrangement.

Either way, not a great deal of $$ involved, just a certain amount of riggi ng time and careful design.

Or, bite the bullet and get a bench-top fume extractor designed for exactly what you intend.

b_noss

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

It's even better....The exhaust ports are underneath and blow directly at what ever you're trying to suck up.

Despite what other might tell you, what you're inhaling when you solder are fumes from the rosin flux. NOT lead particles.

--
"I am a river to my people." 
Jeff-1.0 
WA6FWi 
http:foxsmercantile.com

One of my employees made a simple fume extractor using a 5 inch box fan blowing out through a conical filter. The input side of the fan was an exhaust hose for a dryer with the end taped up for durability. The hose is around 4 feet long so it covers his bench and the filter is quite a good one. And a bit of duct tape.

We have a large shop (20 foot ceiling) so fumes are not much of a problem, as we aren't always doing bench work, but his solution would be perfect for most home work benches.

I think he spent around $25 in total...

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the USENET newsgroup) 
                      John's Jukes Ltd. 
MOVED to #7 - 3979 Marine Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5J 5E3 
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                      www.flippers.com 
        "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

Thanks all. A quick visit to home improvement today and picked up some materials. I will be trying it out tomorrow. Thanks again.

Mainly from Rick's kind encouragement regarding using wax for potting, I picked up a spare pair of HEI coils from the junk yard yesterday. I decided to pot this pair in the leftover paraffin I had from my recent potting/ depotting. This time I did not fill completely to the top and left about an inch of space. Once the wax started to harden and leave a "well" in the center, I then topped off with some remaining hot wax. Once completely dried and cooled today, there was still a well, but very small and of no concern.

There was the capacitor/ resistor series combination I asked about prior. Still not sure what they are for, I went ahead and added them to this pair too, but I did it after the wax potting by leaving some target leads above the wax so the parts could be soldered. After confirming everything working, I covered and surrounded the RC's with high voltage tape.

I can only guess about the RC circuit. It was probably something someone recommended adding to my original circuit. It's purpose might have been as an interference filter, or maybe to drain the circuit when off so that one is not shocked from the possible stored charge in the capacitors.

Anyway, it's working great! The hardest part, and I must have forgotten about this, was getting solder to stick to the HV output terminals of the HEI coils! It took my 240 watt iron to do it, and even then it took a while for the heating to reach optimum.

This paraffin has a melting temperature of 130 F. No additives, easily melted in a double boiler. I did go with another 6x6x4 junction box after first trying a similar sized polypropylene dollar store container. While trying to punch holes in the side for the low voltage primary leads, the entire container cracked on that side. I tried gluing it with hot glue, but the moment the wax hit that, it went right through. Thank goodness for the aluminum tray underneath! With the junction box, although more expensive, JB Quik Weld has the primary feedthroughs cured well enough within 2 hours to hold up to wax and oven heat. I did not bring the HV TV wire leads out the side this time and had them exit at the top. Seems to work fine with no unwanted arcing. I did not cover over the top with the junction box cover, just made sure the wax filled it up.

I also made a solder smoke remover out of a Youtube video I saw using a plastic container, PC fan, and blue evaporative cooling filter you cut yourself. You wet the filters, activate the fan and go. It would be easy to add an activated charcoal layer, but I didn't this time as all I was working with was standard solder. Seemed to do the job although you have to be within about 6" with the circuit or iron for it to draw in the smoke.

Mainly from Rick's kind encouragement regarding using wax for potting, I picked up a spare pair of HEI coils from the junk yard yesterday. I decided to pot this pair in the leftover paraffin I had from my recent potting/ depotting. This time I did not fill completely to the top and left about an inch of space. Once the wax started to harden and leave a "well" in the center, I then topped off with some remaining hot wax. Once completely dried and cooled today, there was still a well, but very small and of no concern.

There was the capacitor/ resistor series combination I asked about prior. Still not sure what they are for, I went ahead and added them to this pair too, but I did it after the wax potting by leaving some target leads above the wax so the parts could be soldered. After confirming everything working, I covered and surrounded the RC's with high voltage tape.

I can only guess about the RC circuit. It was probably something someone recommended adding to my original circuit. It's purpose might have been as an interference filter, or maybe to drain the circuit when off so that one is not shocked from the possible stored charge in the capacitors.

Anyway, it's working great! The hardest part, and I must have forgotten about this, was getting solder to stick to the HV output terminals of the HEI coils! It took my 240 watt iron to do it, and even then it took a while for the heating to reach optimum.

This paraffin has a melting temperature of 130 F. No additives, easily melted in a double boiler. I did go with another 6x6x4 junction box after first trying a similar sized polypropylene dollar store container. While trying to punch holes in the side for the low voltage primary leads, the entire container cracked on that side. I tried gluing it with hot glue, but the moment the wax hit that, it went right through. Thank goodness for the aluminum tray underneath! With the junction box, although more expensive, JB Quik Weld has the primary feedthroughs cured well enough within 2 hours to hold up to wax and oven heat. I did not bring the HV TV wire leads out the side this time and had them exit at the top. Seems to work fine with no unwanted arcing. I did not cover over the top with the junction box cover, just made sure the wax filled it up.

I also made a solder smoke remover out of a Youtube video I saw using a plastic container, PC fan, and blue evaporative cooling filter you cut yourself. You wet the filters, activate the fan and go. It would be easy to add an activated charcoal layer, but I didn't this time as all I was working with was standard solder. Seemed to do the job although you have to be within about 6" with the circuit or iron for it to draw in the smoke.

Let me apologize in advance for the double posting. Not sure what happened there. Sheesh!

I would have built another driver circuit for the additional wax potted HEI's as I'm currently swapping the driver between the oil and wax potted units, but one component in the driver is a rather large Hammond

5 H 150 mA rated inductor. Unfortunately, these start at $20 without shipping. I guess it was no wonder I only bought the one originally. Should anyone have ideas how I might make one, please share. Otherwise, I'll be keeping an eye out for something cheaper.

I would have shared the schematic for this spark generator, but it wasn't my design. It did appear a decade ago on the Tesla coil mailing list.

Let me apologize in advance for the double posting. Not sure what happened there. Sheesh!

I would have built another driver circuit for the additional wax potted HEI's as I'm currently swapping the driver between the oil and wax potted units, but one component in the driver is a rather large Hammond

5 H 150 mA rated inductor. Unfortunately, these start at $20 without shipping. I guess it was no wonder I only bought the one originally. Should anyone have ideas how I might make one, please share. Otherwise, I'll be keeping an eye out for something cheaper.

I would have shared the schematic for this spark generator, but it wasn't my design. It did appear a decade ago on the Tesla coil mailing list.

I ended up making something very similar to this:

In a pinch, it works ok I guess. I'm not sure how well it truly filters as I have yet to test something like incense with it like he did. In hindsight, I probably should have researched further and came up with something else. The biggest drawback is that you have to be pretty close to the intake, within 6", so that would mean the iron, circuit board being soldered, etc. Won't always be that easy getting larger boards that close. So I guess two improvements I would have made would be to add a stronger fan and drop a DIY activated charcoal filter somewhere in between the six layers.