A solder fume extractor is something we could probably all use. While there isn’t much to them, [Steven Bennett] put a lot of thought into making one that was better for him, and we admired his design process, as well as the extractor fan itself. You can see the finished result in the video below.
The electrical design, of course, is trivial. A computer fan, a switch, and a battery — in this case, a Makita power tool battery. But the Fusion 360 design for the 3D printed parts got a lot of thought to make this one of the best fume extractor fans we’ve seen.
There are a lot of details that go into making something like this look professional. For example, the plastic used matches the Makita color scheme, and the nameplate matches the Makita logo. Knowing how to interface with the battery opens up a lot of portable projects. For example, we use a similar battery to power our portable soldering irons.
This is one of those projects where you can easily get carried away. But [Steven’s] design is simple yet functional. Sometimes it seems like the overriding design factor is color matching.
Great build & video about the process behind it 👍
Sure looks great, but if you want to remove (possible harmful) particles from your fumes, HEPA filters are the way to go, see: https://www.sentryair.com/blog/industry-applications/soldering/comparing-solder-fume-extractors-its-all-about-the-filter/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9838864/
That is a really slick idea! I love the way he retained the color and the aesthetic of the original Makita tool and made it look like it could have been bought off of the shelf. The ergonomics are great and having a more powerful fan would really step it up… I might do one attached to the fan corner rather than the edge and put a bit of a cowling on the upper corner.
Love it,
Will build one if I can, a nice addition would be an usb-c port to power a pinecil directly from the battery
I have it on good authority (I own one) that Ryobi makes a 150 watt power inverter for their 18 volt battery system and with some kitbashing could be adapted to drive a fan and act as a USB power source- you’d need a USB A to C cable or adapater, though.
Their 40 volt line has a more powerful inverter (300 watts) and USB-C charing ports, although it’s not PD capable.
The new version of that inverter, RYi150C, has a USB-C charge/discharge port as well, with 30 watts of delivery over that port.
A lot of car type c adapters function from 12 to 24v, shown in the product page. So an 18v battery will work fine. I have one that puts out 65w, so I can even charge a laptop.
Almost all automotive charge adapters CLAIM 24V input support, but I’ve had a half dozen of them blow up after a while at that voltage even though they worked fine for years at 12V.
Fantastic build, take my money I need one! (I don’t even have a fume extractor). But when I saw him plug the raw battery wires into the fan connector I expected it to be for testing purposes only…
A nice build, but I’d be tempted to get something like a DML801 LED work light and base a build around that instead, maybe even keeping some of the LEDs so there’s some illumination to go with the fume extraction. It would be less of a project and more of a hack.
Just be aware that you can over discharge the pack this way , and possibly damage the cells .
Ideally you would have a simple circuit to cut-off the power to the fan as the pack cells dip below ~2.5V
Yes, I’ve built all sorts of crap powered off Makita batteries, notably my top hat Tesla coil, and discovering the packs don’t have a low voltage cut off was an unpleasant surprise. They are very robust though and can survive some abuse. Further be aware that if you take them under about 12V the official Makita chargers won’t recharge them as they register them as broken.
That is very common for most Power tool manufacturers of this type of pack size. Milwaukee Tool will do exactly that (prevent charging) if the pack dips below that threshold as well, due to the possible hazard that can be caused when you charge cells that have been over-discharged.
Larger packs will have Discharge protection to allow the BMS to cut-off external power.
I believe that Makita packs have the discharge protection built in rather than putting it in the tools like many other vendors. It’s very hard to kill a Makita battery.
One question always comes to mind with these projects. Extraction to where?
It is often pumped through activated charcoal and/or HEPA filters then back into the room. I was skeptical but got one from Amazon with a flexible arm funnel thing and it works quite well.
The main thing is just to keep the fumes from drifting into your face. Most of these fans also have charcoal filtration.
Cool project but when you include the use of a 3D printer for making parts, it excludes 90% of hardware hackers who want to Make…I would also add a 3 minute timer with auto shutoff…Enjoyed, Thanks for sharing.
In 2023, I don’t think there are 90% hardware hackers who don’t own a 3d printer. More like 10% – you got this the other way.