I do light-duty electronics work in my home shop on a fairly regular basis.The problem is that the shop sits directly below the master bedroom as wellas the one housing my 2 year old. After an evening of soldering I can smellthe flux fumes in the master bedroom... I know it is overly paranoid, but Iwas thinking of putting together some sort of vacuum venting system to whiskaway the solder (flux) fumes and exhaust them outside to prevent anypossibility of introducing lead into our living space.Does anyone have a system like this in place? How did you set it up? I wasthinking about just putting a 12v 4" computer fan inline with some 2" tubinggoing outside and have a flexible/bendable hose on the bench that I canposition to catch the fumes. Any commercial systems out there that are inthe hobbyist price range?Thanks,-D

2" tubing will be quite restrictive.4" tubing is lots less.I find that the hose sold for clothes driers is around right, combinedwith several 4" fans in series (Make a box fitting several 4" fans, with around 4" space between them, and a cross of cardboard between thefans for 3" to stop the air spinning, so that they actually increasethe pressure.You might consider going to lead-free solder.AIUI, all of the lead will fallout quite close to the soldering station,without ventilation.The flux fumes are just flux fumes.

Soldering bench?

Feb 08, 2004 21 Replies

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Ian Stirling 22 years ago

Wiping the bench down afterwards might not be a bad idea too.,

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Stan Schaefer 22 years ago

Takes me back to old days of hot tubes and cold solder joints.

Stan

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