Soldering fume extractor project

I've been doing allot of small electronics projects lately that require a fair amount of soldering. So I figured that it was about time I got a fume extractor until i saw the price. They ran any where from $36 to $400 bucks. So once again I'm going down the build it your self road. I started by looking through the junk box and I found a few parts i could use.

I needed a fan since that was basically what the project was all about, I found an old brush less ATX computer fan 12V Dc, and a old early 90's styled bag cell phone hand set car Mount to mount the fan on. I also found a computer power switch with led power on indicator lights I figured I could replace the led's with bright white led's for lights to see what I'm working on and use the switch to turn on the fan.

To mount the fan I needed to design a bracket to attach the fan to the cell phone bracket. I had a friend who is a sheet metal guy make it he soldered small tab on the bottom not sure why he didn't make it from one peace?

A little sheet metal and a few brass crews and we have a mounting bracket!

Next I mounted the power switch and the led lights on the bracket I still need to get another white led.

Now with the fan controls and lights mounted its time to work on the base and power supply.

So stay toon for the next installment of the Soldering fume extractor project!!!

Under the sun so little time (Update!)

Well I thought that my solar creation at first was working well, but it was not charging the phone battery as fast as I was discharging my solar charger. So I tried just charging the VZ 6800 phone every few weeks. This way it would have two weeks between discharges to recharge the battery in the solar charger. It work, but it only made my VZ 6800 energy independent for 6 days out of the month.




Now as for my other phone the samsung, I could charge it and that worked well, but it doesn't get used every day so it would hold a charge for about two weeks anyway. I did stumble across some good news though, when I was testing the output of the battery and the solar panel I disconnected it for two weeks and forgot to hook it back up.

What I had found out was on a vary Sunny day the panel will power the VZ 6800 with no battery attached at all in full sun. I think that in the winter months I will have to go two weeks or get more panels. In the summer or on bright days in February it will charge it with out a battery or with it. So the end result is it works it just works allot better with more sun wow imagine that?