Small But Powerful Fume Extractor From Salvaged Parts (portable)!

Fumes from soldering can be dangerous, but there is a solution! Fume extractors use a fan to suck up the fumes and blow them away from you! The problem is, many fume extractors are big and bulky, hard to travel with, and just annoying in general. This Instructable will show you how to build your very own tiny, powerful, and portable fume extractor!

Parts needed

• A small 3 or two wire fan, about 28x38x38 mm, I used this San Ace 38 series fan salvaged from a server power supply. https://www.amazon.com/Axial-Fan-San-14-1-cu-ft/dp/B005T5J5XE

• A PWM motor controller, mine was 30x33 mm big, similar one here: https://www.amazon.com/WayinTop-Voltage-Controller-Adjustable-Control/dp/B08BJ4WQCV/

Tools needed:

• hot glue gun and hot glue

• soldering iron and solder

Start by cutting the connector from the fan off. Then strip the outer insulation. You will see three wires. Red, black, and yellow. The red and yellow are the only ones we care about for now. You can cut most of the three wires off, but leave a length of each about the height of the fan plus about a centimeter and a half. Now, using hot glue, stick the wires to the side they come out of.

The motor controller I used came out of a random thing I took apart. It uses PWM to change the speed of the motor. PWM, or pulse width modulation, is, in simple terms, changing the duty cycle (thus the total ON time) of a square wave to change the brightness of an LED or the speed of a motor. (Go here to learn more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation) The module I have has a DC input, (12 volts) and a motor output. Using the hot glue, stick the controller on to the top of the fan, the side the end of the wires protrudes from. Make sure to position it so that the knob is sticking out from the side that blows, not the side that sucks air in, unless you want your fingers to be sliced when turning the potentiometer (I know from experience how bad that feels).

Now that everything is glued in place, it’s time to finish it! We will start by connecting the fan wires to the motor output of the speed controller. Just solder them straight on. Black to one, red to the other. Be careful! Polarity doesn’t really matter with DC motors, but with this fan, it does! Test the wires one way to see if the polarity is correct. If the motor doesn’t spin, then swap the red and black wires and then it should work. Now, all we need to do is add some hot glue “feet” to it to stop it from moving around during use. I just put a small dot of hot glue on each corner of the bottom of the fan, and set it down on my desk. Once it cooled, I peeled it off and now we have some feet to hold the fan in place!

Now you have your very own tiny but super powerful fume extractor! It is portable, lightweight, and durable! You can power it up with any 12 volt power supply, or even add a battery to make it completely portable. It might work with 9 volts but I haven’t tried it yet. If you liked this project, please comment or favorite it to help other people find it. Happy soldering!