Idea for a new soldering iron?

Here is my idea of a soldering iron construction with embedded fume extractor. I focus on the iron mechanical construction, not on the extraction or electronics controlling circuit.

My experience with soldering irons is that the closer the tip to the handle the best the accuracy with hand soldering.
Also fumes extraction systems like this **broken link removed** work well but the sucking tube gets quite a lot on the way when soldering.

My idea is shown in the crude diagram. The handle goes all the way up to colose to the tip, to allow for more precision work to be done. The horn shape of the handle, in combination with a small embedded fan at the back, form a small fumes sucktion system, that does not get in the way when you try to solder. The handle does not get hot, because it is continuously cooled by air sucktion. Since The opening is wider and the tip is close to the opening, a good sucktion force should be allowed without the use of expensive vacuum pumps that usually try to **** the air through a small tube openning. The larget extraxtion tube helps in that too. It can be made out of silicon for more heat resistance and flexibility.
This scheme may not be too power efficient however, since the heater might be more cooled so the the tip may need more frequent pulses of power to compete with that cooling and stay at the same temperature.

How do you find my idea?
Why these big companies haven't thought it and they tend to stay on the same techniques even on their expensive models?

good effort, but any smoke that goes outside the funnel entrance will never get sucked up.
Sorry , but yours wouldn't be any better than the ones that already exist with the sucker tube mounted to the iron handle.

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full marks for thinking about this though.....the best of all is when you are in a small room with an powerful extractor fan right above the desk where you are working..........if its not right above the desk, then get a fan to blow the smoke away from you so it can then go up the extractor fan]
Dyson company has great solder extractors in the main lab......they are kind of bendy tubes which you can position over the work......they each have an extractor unit beneath them, but these cost some £1400 pounds each.
Dyson's main "mezz" lab also benefits from being enormous, so there is a lot of air volume to take up the smoke...and they also have powerful extractors too

1. Heat should be produced where it is needed most; near the tip. Most of the heat in a conventional soldering iron is simply dissipated. A thermistor kind (based) of heater will be more convenient.

2. The horn shaped extraction tube with the heater in the centre will cool the heater by the air flow, and the control of the temperature will be tricky. The flow will now depend on the angle the iron is held.

3. The wide extraction tube near the tip will interfere with visual positioning of the tip and the control (I prefer the tip to be at an angle of 30-45 degree to the board).

4. A tip that is resistant to oxidation and easily wetted (controlled) near the tip (does not need cleaning so often) will be a real nice thing. Ceramic coated tips are great! The tip should have the embedded heater.

treez said:

good effort, but any smoke that goes outside the funnel entrance will never get sucked up.
Sorry , but yours wouldn't be any better than the ones that already exist with the sucker tube mounted to the iron handle.

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If you do not have these big external fumes extraction horns, it is likely that some fumes will escape using iron-embedded systems. Even the weller ones do escape if you move the iron too fast.
Space, convenience and cost is important.

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c_mitra said:

2. The horn shaped extraction tube with the heater in the centre will cool the heater by the air flow, and the control of the temperature will be tricky. The flow will now depend on the angle the iron is held.

3. The wide extraction tube near the tip will interfere with visual positioning of the tip and the control (I prefer the tip to be at an angle of 30-45 degree to the board).

4. A tip that is resistant to oxidation and easily wetted (controlled) near the tip (does not need cleaning so often) will be a real nice thing. Ceramic coated tips are great! The tip should have the embedded heater.

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Based on your points:

2. The heater will be more cooled, however because of the horn shape of the handle, it will be cooled more near the cold end (fan side) and less near the tip end.

3. It will interfere only if it is too big. This should not be too big eitherway, because it would be difficult to handle. If you keep the iron at a very low angle, it will interfere, but you cannot have everything, I mean either you will have precision or a long heater tip extending out of the handle. Obviously some kind of compensation must be done between openning, tip distance to the opening and air flow, in order to ensure most fumes will be sucked in without extensively cooling the heater.
The tip temperature keeping scheme has to change a bit, the tip will need more frequent pulses (due to the cooling) to be kept at the same temperature.

4. Are there really any ceramic tips nowadays? Ceramics are generally not conduct heat well. I do not know if any kind of exotic material exists. Hey why don't they make these by higly toxic Beo?


I do not try to convince anyone that this is the best scheme that solves all the problems, but this provides:
More precision to the working piece.
Coaxial fume sucking system that is believed to attract most or all of the fumes depending on air flow.
No expensive pumps are needed and the air flow can be adjusted by adjusting the fan speed.
The handle could be possibly made even 3d printed and no special heat resistant materials are needed, due to the internal cooling of the handle.

However the sucktion tube is of higher diameter. It can be made smaller, but then you lose some of the above advantages.
Also the cooling of the heater or power efficiency might be a problem (it might not).

Well; the best advice I can tell anyone who has an idea is the following:
Build a prototype.

Once that you do, and start using it, you will notice any pitfalls which require to be corrected, features that should be included, performance that must be tweaked.

Who knows, and you could surprise us with a new and better soldering station.:grin:
Then, when you become famous, I can brag to my friends that I had already met you on a forum. :smile:

your suction is too close to the tip, and will cool it too much due to air rushing by it

A fan as small as the one in the diagram would be hard to construct. The large air pipe would get in the way.
Perhaps a better way would be to have an air knife at the front of of it pointing at 45 degrees to the back with the exhaust intake at this point. This would bring a constant breeze from the operator and away from them. Just a vertical air flow would make sure that the operator would be breathing fresh air.
Frank

neazoi said:

4. Are there really any ceramic tips nowadays? Ceramics are generally not conduct heat well. I do not know if any kind of exotic material exists. Hey why don't they make these by higly toxic Beo?

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I use solder bits that are coated with a white stuff (seller called it a ceramic) almost to the tip; the stuff is heat resistant and does not change colour (stays white) or gets oxidised. The base material is copper and solder wets only the tip area (it does not pick up excessive solder). Also, the fumes come from the solder flux which is rosin based. Perhaps we shall get a fume-less flux in near future! Big industrial soldering machines do not produce so much of fumes (proportionately speaking).

treez said:

your suction is too close to the tip, and will cool it too much due to air rushing by it

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I think I have already explained it in the previous posts. The idea is to move larger volumes of air through a relatively large nozzle at lower speeds.
Current iron mounted systems use small diameter tubes, moving air faster through a nozzle very close to the tip. I believe they cool down the tip too, bot no problem on temperature keeping.
https://www.hisco.com/UserFiles/Images/Products/weller-12200_ec1201afe_DV_WebXL.jpg