The Particulate Extraction

Equipment
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If you’re soldering a lot, I highly recommend getting something that eliminates the smoke. Depending on what you’re solderinging, the smoke varies from “bad for you” to
“makes you glow in the dark”. As far as I know, this comes down to two possible choices:

Fans with filters

I don’t know that much about this one, because I decided to go with the bugee option below.

Fans with filters in boxes

This sucks up the fumes, has great filters and is easy to hide behind your desk, but it’s pretty expensive for what is essentially a weak vacuum.

2

All your equipment thread titles sound like Big Bang Theory episode names.

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3

Yeah… that’s not an accident. :slight_smile:

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4

I didn’t know where to post that terminological manipulation mechanism observation.

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5

I have this guy:

Is it junk? Time to upgrade?

6

I don’t know, you’ll have to tell us if it’s junk or not since you actually have it…

7

Ha, right. Well it has a pretty good pull although it’s a bit small. You have to work close to it, but it’s small size means you can move it around your project and place it in btw larger helping hands.

Not sure about sound since I haven’t tried any other unit to compare it to. Not ESD safe. Does that matter in a smoke absorber?

Working well for me so far.

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Unless sparks are flying out of it, you should be fine. :slight_smile:
Do you still smell the solder smoke?

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No sparks. I keep my force lightning in check. :grin:

The smoke goes invisible right away but there is a trace of the scent. Should it be gone entirely?

11

I honestly don’t know. I think smell is probably the best way to tell if a smoke extractor is working or not, but I don’t know what “level” to expect, or really even how to quantify that. Obviously not smelling anything would mean that it works better, but it’s not at all clear to me if it matters or not.

12

We use these at work:

I have set them up for all of the soldering processes in my lines. That being said they’re industrial and not cheap, but the idea of a posable tube is a really good.

You could probably print an adapter to connect a tube to the box.