Simple Soldering Fume Extractor

Hello ! In almost all professional electronics environments you will find some form of a soldering fume extractor. This may be a simple desktop unit or it maybe built into the builds ventilation system. The purpose of it is to remove the soldering dust and flux fumes from the work so you don't breath them in. You can buy them from many vendors, most look almost like a little black box that can be tilted, has a filter in front, a fan, and fins on the back to move the air up and away from you. I made one a few years ago with some hot glue, cardboard box, zip tires, old server fan, a real fume extractor filter and a 12v wall plug. The main problem was the box would get caught in the fan and it would fall over, also a 12v wall plug takes up space on your power strip. Now that I have access to all of this fancy equipment I though I would make one from spare parts and make it look cool.

Well I started with the stuff i had laying around. I have a old Rotron Muffin (Date stamped 1988 !) 120 x 38mm 120v AC fan, some left over fan filter assembly's from allied electronics, and some 1/4in plywood. I made it in CorelDraw, and will attach the files for the laser. I have changd the files from the original because I did not put enough fin's in and made them a little to lose however some wood glue will fix that right up :)

I was very excited to find out that i got my settings correct to cut the wood on the first shot, which never happens to me ! but forgot to level the piece so I had to re-cut the right side.

Now I made the tolerance's fairly tight on a few parts to hold it together without glue or screws !, however if your plywood, or acrylic is not thick enough once you have the fan screwed in it will hold it together. I was really upset at myself because when I installed my fan i pushed in on the back pushing in the bearing and ruining the fan :(. I put a simple whole in the side to run the cord out of. Hope you enjoyed this, I threw it together pretty quick, so its not perfect.