Homebrew Solder Fume Extraction System

Over the past year I have been slowly building a solder fume extraction system. It has been a slow project because there was no real push for it. I have been doing a lot of soldering lately and decided that it was time to wrap it up and blog about it.

This system is based upon a vacuum cleaner. I am using a vacuum that goes by the trade name Shop-Vac. They are well known for their tremendous reliability on construction sites and other rough applications. I chose this vacuum because I assumed it would be up to the task of extended run times under medium to high load.

Here are a couple of pictures of the completed system:

The lab side of the completed fume extractor.

The garage side of the fume extraction system.

Here is a video demonstration: