Cheap fume extractor, advice needed

[kalel]

I use a cheap 12v car vacuum that is ghetto zip tied to my helping hands. Pretty proud of it  . Gonna upgrade it by 3D printing a housing to transport the fumes outdoors.

Interesting, how loud is it?

[electronicsdude]

Hey, it's pretty loud. Sounds like a mild blender, that's the downside of it I guess . It's definitely better than breathing in the fumes though. I think that no matter what you do in the end, just use a small fan in the meantime, I regret dragging my feet for so long. I'm going to the doc this week to get a checkup as I've been experiencing abdominal pain recently. Hopefully, it is not lead poisoning.

[nanofrog]

...[snip]...Hopefully, it is not lead poisoning.

Seriously though, lead does not vaporize at soldering temperatures. You'd have to heat it to 1750C for that to happen. The fumes are from the flux used.

And as per ingestion, all you have to do is wash your hands before eating or drinking anything.

[kalel]

And as per ingestion, all you have to do is wash your hands before eating or drinking anything.

That's what I hear from everyone. I also hear that with lead free stuff, sometimes more intense flux is needed, which could be more toxic. I still have no idea which fluxes are safer than others.

[nanofrog]

...[leadfree]...sometimes more intense flux is needed, which could be more toxic. I still have no idea which fluxes are safer than others.

Assuming you mean the level of activity for similar performance to a rosin product, then yes. Lead free fluxes have a shorter working time due to the higher temps, so the flux has to be more active in order to do it's job in the time available vs. a traditional rosin product with lead based solder.

Some no-clean formulations are actually rosin (only labelled as no-clean) or modified rosin based. It's the fully synthetic resin based formulations that's more prone to be nastier in terms of it's fumes IME (harder to clean too).