Fume Extractor Build

Since I do most of my electrical soldering at my basement workbench, and there is not much ventilation, I decided it was about time to put something together to take care of the fumes. I came across a Make Magazine Weekend Project Mini-Fume-Extractor  and figured I could put together something similar.

Goals of build:

• Benchtop Fume Extractor
• Powered from outlet, not batteries
• Easily positionable

I have a box full of old wall power transformers left over from old phones and other appliances, as well as another box of fans scrapped from appliances and computers. Searching through this I came up with the following:

The Fluval filter is a small charcoal aquarium filter I found at a local pet store.

Now I just needed something to hold and position the fan, the first thing I thought of was some type of metal gooseneck like on some desk lamps and microphone stands. I did some online searches and found this site Leflexo but they had no pricing (and still haven't answered my inquiry). I also found a nice little inexpensive gooseneck usb light at IKEA USB Light.  I was planning on heading out to IKEA but decided to check my favorite parts supplier first – Goodwill. There are 4 Goodwill shops within 10 miles of me and I lucked out and found a gooseneck desklamp at the one just a mile away and it was only $4.

The lamp had the added benefits of a weighted base (something I wouldn't need to figure out on my own) as well as a built in switch.  The only thing left was a method of mounting the fan to the lamp base.  Cutting, drilling out and gluing together some scrap acrylic solved that problem.

The last pictures are initial testing just to make sure the fan works, I cleaned it up by soldering and shrink wrapping the wires.  In addition I added the clips from the lamp (held on the glass plate in front of the bulb) to hold on the filter.