Forrest Christian wrote:
> I'm having a bit of a problem with indoor air pollution from flux-fumes 
> and am trying to figure out what to do about it.
>
> In short, I'm finding that the small production runs I'm doing are large 
> enough that the flux fumes from the bulk soldering (solder pot and/or 
> reflow oven) are bad enough that I need to do something about them.  
> Both methods tend to put a lot of fumes in the air over a short period 
> of time - and spread over a fairly large area when compared to say hand 
> soldering a board.
>
> I'm pretty certain I either need a fume hood or some sort of other fume 
> extraction device....
>
> I'm trying to figure out what options don't suck....  Well, maybe I do 
> want something which sucks, but you know what I mean :)
>
> Some of the fume extractors out there look interesting, but they're 
> pricey and I'm not sure they would work for this application.  And I 
> don't really want to spend $1500 for something which sucks in a bad way...
>
> A fume hood looks like a good choice to extract the fumes, assuming they 
> work...  but then I end up putting my soldering pot and/or reflow oven 
> *in* the fume hood, and let the fume hood suck heat away from the 
> solder, etc.
>
> I've even considered some DIY options such as taking a range hood and 
> adding some serious filtration to it.
>
> I'd really like some ideas of what has worked for others in the past.  
>
>   
My brother always ran this end of things. The buildings we leased had a 
rolling back door, so when we
fired up all the soldering stuff, we ran it out the back door so that it 
was half in / half out. A fan blew
the fumes outside and into the Air Force base next door (in the USA, 
there is always an Air Force base
next door). Nobody ever noticed.

--Bob

> Also,  It seems like I've been asking a lot of "small production run" 
> questions lately.   While these aren't completely off-topic, is there a 
> better place (different email list perhaps?) for these types of discussions?
>
> -forrest
>
>   

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