This Extra-Large, Two-Stage Fume Extractor Really Sucks

May 17, 2025 by Tyler August 8 Comments

Solder fumes are not nice on the lungs; nor are fumes from superglue, epoxy, or a whole mess of other things we often find ourselves using on the bench. Some people might be able to go the fume hood route to toss that all outside, but for the rest of us, there’s fume extractors. [Raph] has produced an extra-large, carbon-filtering, two-stage fume extractor that by all accounts really sucks — it is effective at hoovering up solder fumes up to 10″ from its inlet.

Photo of fume extractor — Note the 18V tool battery in the base. That’ll go for a bit.

Even better, [Raph] built a battery box for an 18 V cordless tool battery, and broke out banana plugs so this doubles as a variable power supply via a cheap LM2596 based DC-DC converter. It also serves as a speed controller for the fans, which makes us wonder if you can adjust the PSU output and the fan speed independently…

Maximum suckage is achieved through careful baffle design. Check out the blog to see the trial-and-error process at work. Of course, having a 200 mm axial fan and 140 mm blower fan front and rear is going to move some air no matter what. Which is required to get air flow through the 38 mm thick activated carbon filter that should scrub all nasties quite nicely. We aren’t filtration experts but we can agree with [Raph]’s estimate that it will last “a while”.

If you want to roll your own, all of the STEP files are on GitHub, and [Raph]’s blog has an excellent step-by-step build guide. We’ve seen other hacks from [Raph] before, from his dovetailed modular breadboard to the machine that shaped his bed and automation for his camper van.

Kid’s Ride Gets Boosted Battery, ESP32 Control

April 6, 2024 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

That irresistible urge to rescue an interesting piece of hardware from the trash is something that pretty much every Hackaday reader will have felt at one time or another. Sometimes it’s something that you could put to work immediately, like an old computer or some scrap piece of material that’s just the right size. But other times, you find something on the side of the road that ends up being the impetus for a whole new project.

For [David Bertet], finding a beat up kid’s Jeep Wrangler on the curb was the first step towards a journey that ends with PowerJeep: an open source project that we wager could end up saving similar vehicles from the landfill. The basic idea is simple enough — strip out the vehicle’s original 12 volt power supply and replace it with 18 V provided by easily swappable tool batteries. But as is often the case, it’s the details and the documentation that sets this project apart.

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Reverse-engineering The Milwaukee M18 Redlink Protocol

September 15, 2023 by Maya Posch 20 Comments

In an ideal world, every single battery pack for power tools would use the same physical interface and speak a clearly documented protocol with chargers. Since we live in a decidedly less-than-ideal world, we get to enjoy the fun pastime of reverse-engineering the interfaces and protocols of said battery packs.

A recent video from the [Tool Scientist] goes over what is already known about the Milwaukee M18 Redlink protocol, used with the manufacturer’s M18-series of batteries, before diving into some prodding and poking of these packs’ sensitive parts to see what comes out of their interface.

Previously, [Buy It Fix It] shared their findings on Reddit, covering the basic protocol, including the checksum method, but without an in-depth analysis of the entire charging protocol. Meanwhile [Quagmire Repair] performed an in-depth teardown and reverse-engineering of the M18 hardware, including the circuitry of the BMS.

Putting these two things together, [Tool Scientist] was able to quickly get some of his M18 packs strapped down into the analysis chair for both passive analysis, as well as the effect of overvoltage, undervoltage, overheating and freezing the battery pack on the output reported by the battery’s BMS.

One of the lists of commands and response messages obtained by [Tool Scientist] on YouTube.

The result is a rather comprehensive list of instructions obtained under these various conditions, including a fault condition (05) returned by the BMS of one pack indicating its likely demise. Overall, it does not appear to be a particularly special (or well-designed) protocol, but it does make for a good reverse-engineering target, while adding to the body of collective knowledge on these widely available battery packs.

Hopefully the same inertia that prevents people from moving outside the designated power tool ecosystem due to the incompatible battery packs will also ensure that this level of knowledge will remain relevant for the foreseeable future, especially since the manufacturers of knock-off battery packs seem rather unwilling to share the results of their own reverse-engineering efforts.

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Power Tool Battery Fume Extractor

March 9, 2023 by Al Williams 19 Comments

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.

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