Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

[caspian]

Dear Forum Members,

There are very nice members in this forum who help others. I have never seen such kind experts.
But I noticed many forum members do not use any fume extractor while they do soldering. Flux is extremely dangerous if it reaches our eyes, or if we breathe it in, or if it stays on our hands.
Therefore, I ask all the forum members to follow these recommendations while soldering:
1- Use a cheap surgical mask to avoid entering the flux fume into your respiratory system.
2- Keep your eyes away from the flux fumes.
3- Wash your hands for a long duration if they got fluxy.
4- Use a fume extractor.

You may say that a fume extractor bothers you by taking the space on your table. this can be solved by installing the fume extractor a bit above the table. In the picture, I demonstrated where to install the fume extractor.
You can buy a fume extractor or make it yourself. For example, search on youtube for "fume extractor" to watch how to make one.
I made a good fume extractor for me. I used a flexible pipe and installed two computer case fans at the two sides of it. I connected a 12v power adapter to both the two fans. One fan breathes the air in the pipe and the other fan blows the air out of the pipe.
A good characteristic of this design is that I placed the output side of the pipe out of the window of my room. So the fumes get out of my room.

[madan1]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

What's with the flux flumes?

[goontron]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

I do this for a living... The mask is overkill. So is venting outside. Seriously, just pump it though a carbon canister.

[llonen]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

I have a Purex fume extractor unit, looks like a small vacuum cleaner on the bench that I would not be without, It was intended to be used as a solder tip fume extractor but I reamed out and use a larger connecting hose and funnel now with it. Its a real nice unit but now listed as discontinued

[caspian]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

I do not know how much harmful it is to release flux fumes into the outdoor air where nobody breathes them in. Standard fume extractors absorb the flux fumes using a filter. I do not know which one is safer for the environment.

[R_J]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

With all the fighting etc. going on in your area of the world, your worried about some solder flux fumes entering the enviroment?

[Andrew F. Ali]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

I think the metallic fumes is the hazard here and not so much the flux fumes.

[caspian]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

Breathing flux fumes in will lead to respiratory problems in short term and will lead to cancer in long term.
I have a mechanic friend. he is exposed to dust in his repair center sometimes. Although it is just dust, he has got respiratory problems and continuous coughing after 5 years of working. Now think if it be a dangerous chemical such as flux fumes instead of dust.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

The amount of rosin volatilized by soldering is so low and virtually none is actually burning so that it's much safer than tobacco smoke or wacky tobacky smoke in which one is actually trying to suck up.

Car mechanics have to worry about powdered asbestos which has been shown to be a problem, else maids breathing regular dust when cleaning houses would also be an occupational hazard.

... at least I would assume people here are mostly dealing with either repair or one-off assembly. All bets off if you're doing 24/7 hand assembly with rosin flux...

[momaka]

Re: Please Use a Fume Extractor and a Mask

I do this for a living... The mask is overkill. So is venting outside. Seriously, just pump it though a carbon canister.

Or just blow it away from your face when you solder.
That's what I do now. (Yes, seriously. ) If the weather is nice, I open the windows in my room too. Of course, this is only applicable to when I do hand-soldering (which mostly comes down to recapping these days).

If I do any "reflows" on my stove in the kitchen, I open all of the house windows afterwards, as that creates quite a bit of "PCB stink", even if I don't use any flux (and lately, I don't, because I've found that most GPU failures are between the GPU substrate and GPU die - i.e. nothing that flux can help with, so I don't even bother with it.)

I do not know how much harmful it is to release flux fumes into the outdoor air where nobody breathes them in. Standard fume extractors absorb the flux fumes using a filter. I do not know which one is safer for the environment.

It all depends on the quantity of "pollutants". A small repair shop doing a few boards a day hardly releases more toxins in the air than maybe 2-3 cigarettes. An exception to that would be perhaps those who do chip reflows/rework, as that releases a significantly higher amount of fumes... but still nowhere enough to be considered harmful for the environment. Though it is probably enough that it can be dangerous to breathe it constantly throughout the day. So in those cases, using a filter or venting the fumes out of the room would be a good idea.

Car mechanics have to worry about powdered asbestos which has been shown to be a problem, else maids breathing regular dust when cleaning houses would also be an occupational hazard.

Exactly.

Regular house dust (from linens and such, not silica dust from cement or similar materials) usually causes asthma and/or increased sensitivity to dust and/or allergies over time.

... at least I would assume people here are mostly dealing with either repair or one-off assembly. All bets off if you're doing 24/7 hand assembly with rosin flux...

Exactly! x2
If you're basically doing soldering work only once in a while, with that mostly being the occasional soldering/desoldering of a few components, I don't think you have that much to worry about. But if you're doing it for 8+ hours a day in a room full of flux fumes (or sleeping in the same room where you've been soldering all day), of course that's going to be different.