respirator for soldering fumes

Get or make a soldering iron with a suction tube near the tip end, weller soldering irons typically have/had them.
I have a weller soldering station, it simply sucks the fumes up a small silicon pipe and into a carbon filter thing, you change this when needed.

Or blow the fumes away from you with a small computer fan in a well ventilated area. The problem with a mask is its going to block fairly quickly as flux produces a smoke as well as fumes. Let me see if i can find a pic of the station or iron i am on about.

You could actually connect the tube to a water vac, that way the fumes are pulled away up the tube by a vacuum, and dispersed into the waste water stream.

The first pic is a simple tube thing you connect to the soldering iron, then connect that to the vac side on the water Vac in pic 2

[Edited on 20-11-2017 by NEMO-Chemistry]

Quote: Originally posted by sodium_stearate

OK....guys....let me explain this all just a little bit more so that you all can understand it better. I know full well about not using acid-core solder for electrical work. When ever possible I use 60/40 5-core rosin core solder for most heavier things. For very fine printed circuit work I use the much smaller diameter rosin core solder, to which I add a special non-conducting, non-corrosive flux intended specifically for printed circuit work. The iron is an inexpensive but quite high quality temperature- controlled soldering station which I bought from MPJA.com It has a nice bright tip which never needs to be filed. Just wipe it with a rag. This tip has held up perfectly for the past 4 years without the least bit of pitting. This iron is very nice in that its temperature can be set to an appropriate value for the work to be done. I have built from scratch many digital control boards full of socketed CMOS ics. These boards measure approximately 4.5 x 9 inches and each one has a male edge connector so that it fits into a card cage. This iron has also done literally thousands of the afforementioned tiny inline splices in the myriad of contact bank wiring in my old electro-mechanical telephone exchange. These splices are made to join 2 pieces of #24 gauge single strand copper wire together. Each splice must not increase the overall diameter of the wire any more than absolutely necessary. A bundle of 400 of these wires tightly packed into a cable measures about 1.5 inches in diameter. These splices are made to join together scraps of various contact bank assemblies back into useful strings of these banks so that the resulting new assembly may be used as intended in the telephone exchange. The splices go thusly: The old tinned wire gets the wound silk (yes, that's right, wound silk!) insulation pushed back about 0.2 inches or so. Then the wire is lightly sanded to remove oxidation to make ready for soldering. Then some of the flux is applied then heated, and the wire is tinned. Both wires to be spliced are treated this way in advance of the actual splicing. After the first fluxing and tinning, then both wires are again fluxed then brought together with a tiny bit more solder added. They are overlapped about 0.2 inches and the result is a nice tiny bright sweat-soldered joint. Then the final stage is moving the 3/4 inch long piece of 1.5 millimeter diameter heatshrink tubing over the joint and then heatshrinking it in place. 400 of these joints all laying next to each other in the wire bundle do not hardly add any perceptible increase to the overall diameter of the cable. As far as any future damage to these wires from using this flux, I will say the following with absolute certainty: I started using this type of flux for extremely stubborn soldering jobs nearly 40 years ago. I've taken apart many very old joints made long, long ago when changes are required or for any other reason. In no case ever, have I seen the slightest indication of corrosion nor any other damage to the wires. In short, I honestly believe in what I am doing here. I have done enough long-term testing of it that I am confident in the overall performance of this method. The bottom line is that this kind of flux is the ONLY kind which I have ever found that works for stubborn situations such as this. My only problem is that the fumes produced by this flux have become increasingly irritating as the years pass. So, I now must look to preventing my breathing them. But, the method is a time-tested fully working one which does exactly what it's supposed to do. Unless you have soldered several thousand of these joints and have observed them in service for many, many years yourself, then speculating about whether or not they work well in the long term is just that: speculation. Thanks for the tips so far on the breathing apparatus.

Nemo, thanks for the responses. No, I was not 2nd guessing
anything you posted. I was explaining it all more in an effort
to make it clear to a few of the others, as to exactly what
this procedure is, and why it is being done the way that it is.

Also posted more to get the point across that this has all been
very carefully experimented with over a long period of time
and so is thoroughly tested.

There is nothing published in any book that I could ever
find as to exactly how to produce one of these tiny sweat-soldered lap joints between two ends of single
strand copper wire.

Most people these days would tend to use crimp type "B"
splices instead. Fact is that a wad of 400 of those
would increase the cable diameter from 1.5 inches up
to about 4 inches! Where as the little soldered ones
with the small heatshrink tubing over each one do not
increase the diameter enough to even create the slightest
bulge in the cable.










[Edited on 20-11-2017 by sodium_stearate]



[Edited on 20-11-2017 by sodium_stearate]

I understand the advice with flux and pcb boards, as i am sure you know yourself, the acid flux on a pcb eats the thing and you end up with really bad joints. But I have also soldered wires with what in the uk is called high melt flux, this is high acid content and seems to make no difference with copper to copper joints like in wire.

I think the acid flux reacts badly with the metal on components or maybe the fact that components are a different metal to the copper. Dunno, but for your application maybe acid flux has a better wetting property. I love old machines and devices, i am really jealous you get to play with an old exchange!!

I would love to solder that lot up!! Dont mind my semi arsey posts, no idea whats up but i been a right grumpy git lately .
Where do you get the silk from? I have a old 1940 radio, i been restoring the thing for 3 years!! The original had silk wrapped wire, i was going to replace with just shrink wrap, but if i can get hold of some silk!!

Watch those fumes, apparently its not the best shit to breathe in.

You got any pics of the actual contactors? Not sure thats the right name, but the disc things that turn when you connect calls? What is/was the working voltage to and from the exchange?

Forget the contact question, i just noticed the one you got in the pic is way older!! Isnt that one of the manual plug in a cable exchanges?

I was thinking the of the semi auto things

[Edited on 21-11-2017 by NEMO-Chemistry]

Nemo,

The exchange handles 200 working telephone lines.
Any 5 lines can be calling any other 5 lines out of the
200 simultaneously. It is therefore called a 200-line,
5-path exchange.

It is a fully automatic rotary-dial type machine.
Pictured below is a group of linefinder switches.
These are the ones which hunt for, and find the line
which has just picked up and is requesting a dial tome
in order to be able to make a call.

The mechanics of these are located inside the curved grey
covers. At the bottom of each cover can be seen the
rod to which the contact wipers are clamped.

These linefinders have 4 sets of wipers, with each wiper
set having 2 contacts. So there are 8 conductors
switched by these linefinders. The contact banks
have a total of 800 contacts for each switch, and on
this shelf there are 5 switches, and so 5 sets of the
800-contact banks for them to operate in.

Each of these switches has 10 vertical steps
and 10 rotary steps within each vertical level.
That makes a total of 100 unique connections
in which each of those 100 get to select a unique
set of 8 conductors.

On the right side is the 800-terminal wirewrap block
to which all bank wires are terminated.

This is just one shelf of these switches. Currently there
are a total of 10 shelves involved in this telephone
exchange. The switches shown here are the oldest
ones I have, dating from 1947.

There are many newer ones in other locations
which have dates into the mid-1970s.

The red and blue silk insulation is the stuff that was
put there at the factory. Most of it was made at
Western Electric Co., and there is also some smaller
bit of Automatic Electric equipment.

When this picture was taken, the shelf had been
finished and was in the process of being connected
to the rest of the exchange. On the black termination
block on the right side, note that it is divided into
4 vertical sections. Each of those sections has 200
wirewrap pins coming from one of the 200-wire
bank assemblies.

Note loose wires hanging down. Those are ones which
were being cut to length, stripped, then wire wrapped
down to the block at the time of installation of this shelf.

Note the vertical white strip on the left side of the black block
on the right side of the shelf. That has the numbers of
each pin row. There are 80 rows of 10 each.
Just to the left of the vertical white strip are all 800
of the wires which go out to the contact banks.
This shelf required soldering 800 of those little inline
splices on order to obtain long enough wire tails to
reach to the wirewrap pins on the block.







[Edited on 21-11-2017 by sodium_stearate]

[Edited on 21-11-2017 by sodium_stearate]

Just added another pic of the step-by-step
telephone exchange which I have here in my house.

And just to keep it relevant to the original topic,
also included is another pic of the back side, showing
the mass of red and blue contact bank wires.
In this particular case, no splicing was required.



[Edited on 21-11-2017 by sodium_stearate]

Where did you get it from? I like electronics as well as science, but old machines like that are really cool. I like doing up old radios, i doubt i could fit that in the house. But there is many fun hours of soldering in that lot lol.

Extremely jealous

At work we use these or similar http://www.directindustry.com/prod/weller/product-112639-108...
for hobby use you can vent directly outside, so all you really need is
tubing - fan - tubing ... and a hole from inside to outside.
Domestic hvac stuff should give a cost effective solution.

Unless your workplace is draughty, the airflow works very well.
Fan noise would be my main consideration,
and larger diameter piping gives less 'sucking' noise.

P.S. Just like a fume hood, what goes out must come in,
if you force air out of a room then outdoor air will find its way in to replace it.
If you have to heat or cool your workplace then heat loss/gain may cost more than filters.

You could justify the cost of a fume hood maybe ?


[Edited on 21-11-2017 by Sulaiman]

Well now you've got me investigating this whole
63/37 eutectic thing.

It seems that this whole business about 63/37 has
crept up and snuck in during the past 20 years or so.

I will say this about using 60/40 in my behalf:

I've soldered a heck of a lot of circuit boards built from
scratch using the .040 inch diameter Kester "44" 60/40
solder. With the leads and pads nice and bright, and with
a bit of added non-conductive, non-corrosive flux, the joints
flow very nicely and there has never been any problem with
"cold" joints.

I would view claims about the 63/37 being so much better
with skepticism. I am not against at least trying it, but I rather
doubt that it will behave much differently than the
stuff I've been using.

Especially on these many little sweated lap joints
that join 2 ends of single strand #24 gauge wire together.

What is the temperature of the iron here?
Hot enough to make a decent joint.
Cool enough not to cook the tip too much.
That is the temperature.

update