Working in my room during daytime is a seldom activity. Last several months I was working full-time in the department and my home workspace was deserted for most of the week. However, the weekend sessions at home have become a quite tedious exercise: starting from 1 PM the sun rays invade my room and mercilessly heat up everything until 10 in the evening. Something had to be done.
To protect me from the scorching heat, I’ve taped together a couple of square meters of heat shielding out of al-foil and cardboard. With only a small modification to the frames of my window, I got myself a reliable string rails that keep the shields detachable and allow to slide them sideways.
A very handy thing has come out of a detached cooling fan. All it took to get it working is a simple button switch and a 12V wall-plug power supply. Luckily all of these parts can be easily extracted from any electronics dumpster. I have discovered several advantages of having such device at my disposal:
- The small fan can be attached to various places in the vicinity of the workspace, refreshing the air where it is needed
- Very nice for air exchange in the room, when the open window does not do its job fast enough
- During long soldering sessions directed air flow is very handy: it blows the flux fumes away (I don’t have an air filter, yeah)
Despite my fascination with the small neat air exchanger, its noise is definitely noticeable. I have to select the blowing performance more carefully next time.
