Third Hand Fume Extraction Fan

by sjroth in Circuits > Tools

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Third Hand Fume Extraction Fan

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When soldering, the fumes from the solder can be very irritating, and they aren't especially good for you either. After doing some simple solder jobs I realized that I needed a way to get rid of these fumes, as the ventilation at my workspace is pretty bad. My workspace is very limited, so I didn't want to fill it up with a huge fume extactor. I needed a way to make it small and handy. Then I discovered rstraugh's Instructable, in which he showed us how to make a "Third Hand++". From rstraugh's fume extraction concept I came up with my own way of doing it, with a standard third hand device. 

Supplies
  • Third Hand with magnifying glass or other third extension
  • USB powered laptop cooling fan
  • Various screws and nuts
Though I would rather have used a 12 brushless fan, I wanted to keep it simple and easy to make. So I used a 5V laptop cooling fan from a cheap laptop cooling pad that I bought in a Chinese electronics store for about five dollars. The cooler had two fans, but I cut one of them off because I only needed one. The fan also had little blue LEDs inside it, but the blue light was distracting, so I clipped them off.
To attach the fan I used a screw and nut, putting the screw through one of the holes in the corner. I then took  the arm of the magnifying glass and fastened it to the screw with a nut.
To stop the wire from getting in the way of the soldering iron I taped it to the base.

And that's pretty much all there is to it. Please comment for any improvements, suggestions, questions, or anything else. And don't forget to post pictures of your own third hand fume extractor.