Poor man's soldering fumes extractor

My electronics lab is inside my office at home. It’s very convenient for the occasional hacking electronics project. Still, I do a lot of soldering, and breathing those solder fumes in a closed space isn’t very healthy, especially during winter when the windows are all closed.

Home labs are so prevalent now that brands are paying attention; fume extractors are no longer expensive. But what’s the fun in buying when I can build my own?

The Ikea UPPÅTVIND is a pretty decent, really cheap 35€ air purifier that uses a standard EPA (Efficient Particulate Air) 12 filter and has a 3-speed fan that is relatively silent. Putting it on the table alone when you’re soldering, if you have the space, does a great job of extracting the fumes, but I want something more space-efficient and flexible.

35€ Ikea UPPÅTVIND air purifier

Brains on the Ikea UPPÅTVIND

I like buttons and home automation, so the first thing I did was modify the UPPÅTVIND to use a NodeMCU V3 ESP8266 microcontroller running ESPHome to control its functions.

Opening the UPPÅTVIND

This was a very simple hack that only took some wires, soldering, and a few minutes to complete. I have zero merit on it; the esphome-ikea-uppatvind project by Jonathon Lui on GitHub explains all the necessary steps.

Retrofitting the ESP8266

I then flash the ESP8266 with ESPHome, go to my Home Assistant configuration, add the new device, and now I can control the air purifier from my mobile phone, an external button, or from an automation.

Home Assistant can now see the UPPÅTVIND entities and control it

Adding a flexible hose

Next up, I want the air purifier on the floor, not on the table, and a long, flexible hose I can pull to the table when I need it for soldering.

For that, I need to design a custom replacement cover for the UPPÅTVIND to which I can later connect the hose. Shapr3D to the rescue. You can find the 3MF/STL files here if you want to print them.

My hose adapter, modeled in Shapr3D

I glued everything together with a plastic epoxy. It doesn’t look great, but the parts are inseparable for life, trust me.

Glueing the parts together

And this is the final result, an air purifier on the floor with a flexible hose that I can easily move around the table when I need it.

Final configuration

It works

The hose works as expected; it sure extracts the soldering fumes. I might add a cone to the end of the hose later to collect the fumes more efficiently later. For now, this is great.

It works