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✨ Supplies
⇢ WeCreat Lumos Portable Laser
⇢ WeCreat AirGuard Cube Fume Extractor
⇢ PU Vegan Leather Keychains
⇢ Small Fan
⇢ HEPA Filter
⇢ 3″ Vent Flange
⇢ Optional Charcoal Filters (Various Sizes)

I recently took a Portable Laser to a Cat Convention, and I needed to make a fume box on the fly! Everyone‘s been wondering what my fume box is made of, and I want to upgrade it a little and show you what’s in there! AND! As a lucky treat, I now have an official Fume Extractor from WeCreat to compare it to!

Who will win and which one is right for your laser? Let’s find out!

➕ Subscribe to my YouTube Channel HERE

How to Make a Cheap Laser Fume Extractor Box

Here is my little purple fume box.

It’s literally just a cardboard box with a 3 inch vent flange on the top.

Inside there is a HEPA filter and then I’ve got an electronics fan to suck out all of the fumes. It really is a simple design. I picked this HEPA air purifier filter to fit the 3 inch flange and fan.

Here’s how I made it. First, I sealed up one side of that filter as best I could with hot glue and cardboard.

I cut out a hole just the right size.

This really is just a simple Macgyver way of making a fume box. A few more cuts and a whole lot more hot glue later we are pretty much ready to go! I have the fan blowing out so it just sucks out the fumes.

The laser also has an exhaust fan, so with their powers combined you can see it really does suck!

Now to fortify it. I have these charcoal filters leftover from another air purifier I have, and I just literally staple them together and wiggle them around the HEPA filter to give it just one more layer of air filtering.

I had one more piece leftover, so I hot glued by the vent opening where all the initial fumes come in. So, now we have a few more layers for fumes and smoke to filter through!

I just need to seal it back up with this very fancy packing tape.

Let’s do a flow test. You can adjust the speed on this particular fan. It’s blowing out, which means it should be sucking in just fine.

WeCreat AirGuard Cube Fume Extractor Review

So here is my filter box next to the WeCreat Fume Extractor.

The WeCreat one is a bit bigger than mine, and fancier.

The WeCreat Fume Extractor on its low setting is not very loud. Considering this would be underneath a table or wherever you are using your portable laser, it’s probably not going to be that bad and you can turn it on only when you’re doing jobs as well. The high setting is just a little bit louder.

This fume extractor has one heck of a filter a lot bigger than mine, so I don’t think it’ll be too surprising how the tests go. But hey, it’s worth a try.

Smell Comparison Testing

The first Test we will be doing is the incense test, and this is purely for scent only. We’ll see if it’s good enough to be able to filter out the sweet scent of some Nag Champa.

My Fume box seems to filter it out quite a bit, which is not at all the point of incense. But hey, this is science, right?

And as far as the official fume extractor, I could barely smell it, so that is a great sign.

Now let’s test them with some smokey laser cut MDF.

I am smelling almost nothing.

Actually, I was very impressed by how much that filtered out. Of course I couldn’t help myself, I had to make a little cat shaped thing.

Now to try it with my puny little Fume Box.

It’s filtering through more than if there was nothing, but you can still smell it. I give it a C-.

Next up let’s try a vegan leather keychain!

Engraving this usually doesn’t make the best smells so let’s see how it filters out for my little fume box!

It’s OK.

We were actually making these at that cat convention and absolutely nobody complained about it.

Here is the final product. Now to do the other side. It’s smelling like nothing is coming through!

I did unfortunately misalign the keychain and I bumped into the laser so the backside I completely ruined. Whoops.

Which Fume Extractor is Better for Small Lasers?

So how do they compare?

My fume box accompanied me at that convention, and nobody complained at all about the smells. Even though you could smell some of the wood engravings come through people actually seem to like it. I think a lot of us can agree it’s kind of got this campfire smell to it, which is super pleasing, and it wasn’t so smoky that it was billowing out of anything.

As far as the WeCreat fume extractor it was literally made for this laser and other small lasers just like it. So, it’s no surprise that it did so well! I would be super comfortable about not getting any complaints abroad no matter the type of laser engraving or cutting fumes.

So if you have a portable laser and you are looking for a way to extract fumes from your laser jobs I highly recommend the WeCreat Fume Extractor. You will have zero complaints from customers and if you’re in tight space then this is definitely the way to go.

But if you are on a budget and want to make your own fume box with pretty OK results, then check out my supply list above to make your own!

If you want to see what happened when I took a portable laser to a cat convention, then check out this post next!

If you love lasers as much as I do and want to increase your potential revenue with a laser-on-the-go, consider the WeCreat Lumos!

Happy Crafting!

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