I plan to do some more soldering in the near future, to experiment with the Internet of Things (IoT). So I checked my equipment for completeness and of course found some stuff desirable. One of them was the The fumeFan to remove the smoke and noxious fumes from soldering. But instead of buying a solution, it would of course be better to Do It Yourself (DIY). Well, it just happened to be that Google and/or YouTube showed me a link to How to: Candy tin fume extractor and it seemed simple enough for me to try and build.

When ordering some other electronics, adding the stuff required for this project was easy enough. That is: the 9V battery connectors, a 7812 voltage regulator, a 50x50x10 mm 12 volt fan, some heat shrinking tube, and a nice big red button.

Instead of a candy tin, I used a cheap wooden box from a discount store; also giving me a little more space inside to make things easier. At the same shop I bought a splatter screen and re-purposed it by cutting the screen part out. The activated carbon filter is from a garden shop with 2 pieces of 95x95x25 mm filter in the box.

Construction was easy with the instructions from the original article and the Weekend Project: Mini Fume Extractor video. I didn't make step-by-step photos of the build, but this is what it looks like inside:
I only need to add something to keep the batteries in place... and start another project with soldering involved to see if it removes the fumes properly.

Update (2014-11-24): I've removed the picture of the filter, as some testing showed that smoke passes to easily at this moment. I probably need to tweak the filtering a bit (replacing or adding another type of filter). And in retrospect, a bigger fan would be better as well: now I need to put it very close to the point of soldering to work. Perhaps a (transparent) extractor hood would help as well.