[hackerspaces] Soldering and safety?

[Felicitus]

On 05/15/2013 05:14 PM, David Brightbill wrote:
> I'm a safety-third kind of guy in my personal life but as a board member
> of a space, I worry about liability etc.  Recently, during a soldering
> class, the topic of soldering fume extractors came up.  What's the take
> on these?  Should we buy or make some, or is this overkill for the
> application?

tl;dr:
Attach signs which say: "Wash your hands after soldering" prior to
buying fume extractors.

Long Version:

Most of the fume you'll encounter while soldering is due to vaporizing
the flux, not the solder itself (lead vaporizes at about 1700°C, there's
no way you could ever vaporize solder with your regular soldering iron).
So your agenda is:

1) Instruct people to wash their hands

People at our hackerspace rarely do it, including myself. I try to do
it, but it's easy to forget. And I forgot to put up such a sign so many
times (added to my calendar now ;)).

But even if you don't wash your hands, it's very unlikely that you
absorb an amount of lead that will cause health issues. I have no
numbers and no research done on this; so if in doubt, do your own research.

2) Invest into fume extractors

That's something you could do, but often isn't done, simply because it
isn't super-effective unless you buy some of those heavy-duty fume
extractors which sits right above the place you're about to solder
(typically 5-10cm, and typically it's in the way) [1].

Those smaller ones which sit about 20-30cm away [2] still reduce fume
"pollution", however, they aren't as effective as the heavy ones.

Neither of those will stop fume. It will be there. But fume isn't as
dangerous as the public believes, and efficiency of those fume
extractors is much less than you'd expect.

Suggestion: Buy one, and leave it up to your members to use it.

All of the above is based on my personal knowledge and experiences, so
don't solder me down on this. I hope that helps!

Felicitus


[1]
http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j00oCFtkHYgEsqy/Welding-Fume-Extractor.jpg
[2] http://www.elexp.com/solder/456DLX.jpg