Some years ago in another life and another country, we recognised the hazard to health of operators breathing in flux fumes from hand soldering as well as from wave or convection reflow machines. We already had in place a substantial fume extraction plant that removes polllutants before discharging exhaust air to the outside world. A little later, each assembly operator bench was equiped with fume extraction as well that went through the same process. The fluxes in question were water soluble types from Alpha. I have seen smaller, hand-sized, portable fume extraction gadgets with an axial fan that suck air and fumes through a charcoal filter, similar in principle to domestic cooker hoods. I am less certain of these as they draw a current of cool air across the workpiece with the danger (unproven) of cooling solder joints too fast. Pete Duncan Lon Weffers <weffers@MATA To: [log in to unmask] S.NL> cc: (bcc: DUNCAN Peter/Asst Prin Engr/ST Aero/ST Group) Sent by: Subject: [TN] clean air TechNet <[log in to unmask] ORG> 06/15/01 06:35 PM Please respond to "TechNet E-Mail Forum."; Please respond to Lon Weffers Dear technetters, Recently we have some problems with our breething air inside the building. Some of us think its due to the outgassing of the just soldered pcb's, others think it is the flux. Main problem occurs in front of the soldering machines and the reflow oven. There is now a discussion going on about the safeness of fluxes and soldering (pastes). My question is if someone had the same problems and what did they do to reduce these problems? Lon Weffers Matas Electronics bv --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------