Flux Suckers are now for sale.
Airflow up to 200 CFM evacuates solder smoke efficiently.
Small footprint saves valuable assembly space real estate.
Rugged design withstands heavy use, and abuse.
Developed in conjunction with a Beta Test Team over 5 years.
This is The Best Solder Smoke Evacuation Fan you can buy.
$130, shipping or delivery available.
I've been building the first production run of the Flux Suckers. This is my solder smoke extraction fan that I have been developing over the past 5 years. This whole idea started when I had to start using a solder with no clean flux. The solder smoke was acrid, and caused me to have a autonomic cough response whenever I got the solder smoke close to my face. Gotta keep that smoke away, so I needed a good solder fan to do that. And, Flux Suckers was born...
It started with selfish intent, I gotta keep that smoke away from me, but I could see that the other solder technicians around me had the same problem. The acrid no-clean solder smoke was irritating them as well. So, I started building copies, and developing the Flux Suckers. The very first Flux Sucker was very sophisticated. It had a PIC Processor which used Digital Pulse Width Modulation to bias a MOSFET which was driving the Fan. It was very effective, but also very expensive. One of my first tasks was to knock the bottom out of the cost, so I changed the speed control to a Linear Regulator scheme. At the time I was building the Flux Suckers with salvaged computer case fans.
I also used all sorts of salvaged parts to make the control head, and base. This gave my Flux Suckers a ragged appearance seeing how they were literally made from salvaged parts, and junk. I recently scrapped out all the old Flux Suckers, and reminisced about all the crazy impromptu designs I had come up with. Over the last year or so I wanted to take the Flux Suckers to a manufactured product level. This lead me to generate a Bill of Materials in order to reliably source cost effective parts. I also made mechanical drawings to make the parts that needed to be fabricated uniform. The performance was also a big issue. I wanted Flux Suckers to be cost effective, but also perform at a levels where there are no complaints. So now Flux Suckers has a switching regulator that can deliver up to 3 Amps. The fan is a very powerful server fan which delivers up to 200 CFM, maybe about three times what it normally needed to serve this function. In normal operation the Flux Sucker is relatively quiet, but you can crank up the power when you need it to handle a bigger task.
