Review on Solder Fume Extractor: Industrial Grade Filtration for Soldering Power & Hand Tools by Steve French

This is a smart little device that's great for the occasional soldering or other job that produces smoke or non-toxic fumes. And it's cheaper than a range hood and much more practical. This doesn't eliminate all solder odors in my experience, but reduces them somewhat if you get close enough to the fan assembly. This definitely keeps the smell of solder and smoke in the room when you work on a project for a long time. I usually just open a window and rely on a ceiling fan and it works better than that. It's not the same as a HEPA filter, which cleans the air to a high level of purity, but it eliminates the smell of rosin or solder fumes - even if you like the smell, it's probably not very pleasant to inhale. I've tried it on wood burning and it does a good job of preventing the smoke alarm from going off (which has happened in the past). I think it filters the smoke out of the air, but it's not 100% smokier the closer you put it to your work. I've used it with a fan blowing cross winds across the back of the table and it kept odors to a minimum even when the wood was badly charred. I was wondering if this would be good for more than just soldering, and its usefulness is limited when you're working with some chemicals. I put it on the table while cleaning the metal parts and the smoke seems to have reduced, but not by much. It's definitely not a substitute for a good mask when you're dealing with even non-toxic or low-toxic fumes from things like brake cleaner, WD-40, and oily chemicals. It's not designed for that, so just use a good chemical mask instead. But for what it's designed for - solder fume, wood smoke, hot glue, etc - it does its job well. I definitely don't like having a range hood when you have a shop like this, but just for home and hobbies it's great. Overall I'd say at the current price of $35 it's a good addition to a soldering station or not. - Poisonous craft that produces odors and smoke, but don't expect "Odorless".