Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1243344
82 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2020 how to dispose of the filters once they've reached their end of life than they do about the necessity of using fume extraction. There seems to be less regulation on the environment that the operator works in than the disposal side of the industry. Johnson: What are those challenges? Mitchell: The basic questions that I get are, "Can I dispose of the filter, and if so, how?" My answer is when my filter is new, it doesn't have anything in it that requires any type of special handling for disposal. It's a stainless steel case with a glass paper filter, and activated carbon, which can be disposed of through any normal process. But once you start pulling in mate- rial to it, what I typically tell them is every municipality is going to have its own require- ments. The best advice I can give to people is you want to treat that filter the same way you would treat the material you were processing that the filter has now absorbed or adsorbed, depending on what you were doing. Then, every time you change zip codes, your require- ments could change a little bit. Johnson: I have a filter I swapped out, and now I have to dispose of it. Perhaps this filter has come out of the hood over the laser router, and has collected material that is not safe for the general landfill. What do I do? Mitchell: Probably the easiest way to say it is you'd be disposing of it the same way you dispose of any leftover material. It's going to go through the normal process of disposing of material; which may indeed be your local landfill. Johnson: The waste management chain that you already have in place, then? Mitchell: Right. And then if you are working with some material that was a little bit more exotic, you're going to have that same chain for that type of material. It might go through an incinerator process or something like that, but the easiest way to describe it is you're their shop, do you find most facilities are ade- quate or is there room for improvement? Mitchell: From the standpoint of capturing and filtering and reintroducing the air into the room, I'd say we see a lot of room for improvement with that. Our biggest competitor is still blowing the air out of the building onto your neighbors. Johnson: That can't be great for the environ- mental sorts of guidelines that are coming up. Mitchell: Right. Especially in the electronic industry, the majority of the large ovens and conformal coating systems, and all of that is being vented out of the building. Hand sol- dering, I'd say a significant amount of that is being run through some type of a filter, a local exhaust filter, and part of that's because all of the soldering iron manufacturers realized years ago that there was a great accessory they could be selling with their iron, which was some type of a capture system. A number of companies manufacture a fume extraction capture system that they sell with their irons. They all work on essentially roughly the same process: the pre-filter, some type of a higher efficiency filter, possibly a HEPA. To remove odors/gas, some of them include a foam pad that's impregnated with carbon; that doesn't capture odors for very long. Some of them have activated carbon in them. Johnson: There are a variety of levels and capa- bilities that are available. Mitchell: Right. Johnson: Your region includes the U.S. states California, Oregon, and Washington. These three states are known for being pretty aggres- sive in their environmental protection legisla- tion. What are some of the legislative or envi- ronmental protection challenges that your customers in these three states are dealing with on a regular basis? Mitchell: I would say they have more of a chal- lenge with, or maybe more questions about,