Chinese-made reflow soldering ovens

I use a piece of half-inch aluminum jig plate on top of an old-timey Corning ceramic hot plate, the kind used in chem labs.

Works great and takes up a lot less space than an oven.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

With solder paste, if you misalign the component slightly, when the solder reflows, it will magically float into the proper position.

If you Google for "toaster oven reflow contoller": You'll find a variety of articles on how to modify a toaster oven into a workable reflow oven. For example, here's a list of possible kits: Here's my version which I use mostly to reflow chronically defective HP Jetdirect network cards:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Am 08.10.2017 um 22:40 schrieb Dave M:

I have one of these:

< >

Bought it when the manufacturer did not yet have distributors, at a somewhat smaller price.

Vapor phase is a completely different game.

I'm still trying to recover from the "English manuals" of <

>, which is a Locky_Z curve tracer:

I got some results for JFETs:

Some IF3602 pairs: <

>

Some of the new ones from ON, e.a.: <

>

I had no luck so far with 2N2222. Probably they oscillate happily on the tracer and need base stoppers.

cheers, Gerhard

Original Chinese web page: Looks like it's still in production.

T962A SMD Reflow Oven Fix/Hack

Maintaining a list of T962/T962A problems, improvements and suggestions how to get good results #76

Modifying the T-962 Reflow Oven

More videos:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

My vision has always been mediocre, and it's not improving with age. (The retina detach didn't help, either, but that's mostly fixed now.) I got a compact Mantis on ebay and it totally changed my attitude about SMT. I was replacing some 0603 resistors yesterday and the optics was no problem.

The imaging is startling, and there's enough working distance for soldering or probing. Or Dremeling.

When you can really see what you are doing, steadiness improves too.

As people have noted, a convection oven may be all you need for reflow.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

For quick-and-dirty prototypes, I use a saucepan containing a thin layer of sand as a heat spreader and to control the heat flow. Contraindicated for PCBs with SMD components on both sides :)

Works well, and is cheap/fast enough that you can do experiments to find what works for you, and therefore what you actually /need/.

Den mandag den 9. oktober 2017 kl. 00.44.50 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

I've just done a board with four of these:

with no problems

on an old laboratory hotplate with the magnet removed

Sweet! This means one less footprint in my lab.

The aluminum jig plate seems easy enough to fabricate. Is there any particular reason that you use aluminum?

My Corning ceramic hot plate comes with a "stir" feature that obviously isn't necessary for reflow. Other than that it has a power button and a rheostat with an internal switch with a knob that's labeled from 0 to

2. So, how do you control your hotplate? Do you use a reflow controller? Or do you just use a thermometer and "eyeball it" until the paste reflows?

In regards to the OP's question about the T962 oven, people complain about its fumes.

Thank you,

--
Don Kuenz, KB7RPU

I had to remove the magnet from the hotplate, some components are magnetic, it is "rather annoying" to when all the components you have meticulously placed starts jumping around on the board

I just eyeball it and have a stack of books next to the plate to slide the board onto once it has reflowed

I assume you had a solder-paste stencil. How did you place the parts?

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Den mandag den 9. oktober 2017 kl. 01.45.17 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

yes I used a stencil, placed parts with tweezers

I have one and it works OK. I've done hundreds of boards through it over the years. The instructions are typical chopped up English but understandable and there are vidoes on the net you can watch. It's bulky. You really need about

24in x 24 in work space with good ventlation. No problem doing 2 sided boards.

You can program custom profiles and depending on the paste my need one. The profiles can be hard to setup. It does an OK job following the profile but if you hold a temp too long (say board soak) and then try and ramp up the hold temp will fall below at the end and then over shoot on the up hill side. Once you get the profile set correctly it will do a OK job.

Do not expect to fill it to the edge with a board. You will not get good soldering

in the 280x300mm range max.

If you are only doing a few boards once in a while use the hotplate method. The T962 is big and heavy and will just be collecting dust and in the way. But if you have the room it will work fine for you.

Remember you are gonna need paste. I've had good luck with these guys

--
Chisolm 
Republic of Texas

How hot do you have to get a SOIC generally before worrying about physically damaging the package/die/bond wires etc?

I've used a regular heat gun on a low setting to do "reflow" from time to time in a pinch, moving it around quickly so as not to concentrate the air blast in any one place for too long; it's always a bit of an anxiety-producing experience but as far as I can tell I've never had a part obviously fail because of it

On a sunny day (Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:00:18 -0400) it happened bitrex wrote in :

I have seen a youtube video of a Chinese workshop that replaced memory chips in iphones for bigger ones with a heat gun... While U wait..

I have a toaster oven converted to a reflow oven with a ramp and soak temperature controller. But, for one-offs, I do not use it.

To do manual assembly by reflow, first you need to apply solder paste to the board, either dot by dot or with a stencil. Then, you need to apply ALL the parts. If you just TOUCH the sufrace of the board, you will knock parts out of alignment. I can't imagine placing dozens of parts with tweezers without knocking them out of place. I do this with my pick and place machine, but I just take the board off the P&P and straight into the oven, with no fiddling around with the board. I really don't think this is a sane way to do SMT.

Using a good head-mounted magnifier (or better, a stereo zoom microscope!!) you can easily place the parts and solder. I put a dab of solder on one pad of each part location, tack the part down and then solder the other lead(s). I've been doing this for years for one-offs, it is faster than through-hole.

Jon

For lead-free, I set the peak temp to 247 C. I have a thermocouple that I poke into a through hole in the board, so the controller sets that temp of the actual board substrate.

Jon

Well, I can't say I'm shocked!

200 W/m/K and thick sections available for cheap. I bought the piece from McMaster-Carr iirc.

I have this really nifty Extech three-channel type K thermocouple thermometer. Beautiful Layout Hunchback and I did some experiments to get the temperature profile right.

We also use only leaded paste, which is more forgiving.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

That's how we replace parts with center pads. The trick is controlling the hot air so adjacent parts don't go flying.