I need a reflow oven for my production lab immediately!! HELP!!!

I'm in need of a reflow oven specifically an lead-free one. I need to reflow at least a 100 boards a week. I google most of the company locally in CA. I'm thinking of buying one of my vendor in Corona. I made an appointment tomarrow to go visit and see their ovens. I saw images of it and the specification is in my needs.

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. I'm looking at the 5 zone reflow oven it look very descent and the size of the unit is perfect for my working area. The price is 4K for AE-R330A and close to 6K for AE-R530C. That price is very reasonable than Manncorp and other vendor. Any suggestion?

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Reply to
vtech9815
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Gosh, you sure profile like a spammer for stmax pretending to be an electronics repair tech on the 'net.

Black and Decker makes a fine toaster oven that is available immediately at numerous vendors, and will easily process 100 boards a week.

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Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Reply to
Ecnerwal

Not what the OP wants - just a comment: I sometimes cure silk-screened solder mask in a crude oven in my brother's printing press next door. The oven is normally used to "reflow" laser toner on polyester sheets which serve as the master plate for a small offset machine.

The oven is a simple affair: a flat box with a sliding tray for the polyester sheet, a heater at the bottom and temperature control is apparently by a bimetallic strip. It costs the equivalent of about $50 US. The temperature dial goes up to 300 deg C, and was fairly accurate up to the 140 deg that I measured in steps with a probe. Might do as a poor man's solder reflow station. :-)

Reply to
pimpom

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Are you serious a black and decker toaster oven. I would think this for consideration if I was an hobbyist. I thought I will be talking to professional technician or expert in my field in this forum not some low budget machine ( LOL BLACK & DECKER FOR Lead-free) U serious. I will not make a production buy using this kind of product. ROFL. I cannot believe this guy. And no I'm not a spammer I am just looking for someone local who will not charge me an arm and leg for shipping. I'm just trying to put my 2 cent in this forum to help others out that maybe in my situation.

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Reply to
vtech9815

f

Five zones is marginal for a RoHS process. We're having problems (QFNs in particular) with our five-zone oven. The owner is almost convinced that we need a seven or nine zone oven.

Reply to
keithw86

LOL, well now you know. >X-D

There are a lot of professionals here... and a lot of hobbyists. And, a number of those professionals would not be opposed to using hobbyist techniques for production purposes!

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms
Reply to
Tim Williams

Tim Williams a écrit :

While a number of hobbyist wouldn't object either to using professional tools for single units :-)

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Thanks,
Fred.
Reply to
Fred Bartoli

vtech9815 wibbled on Thursday 11 February 2010 18:45

I'm not a professional hardware guy, though I worked for a smallish UK company that could handle such work (I did software for them) so I know the sort of kit you are talking about...

What I am wondering is rather than make a panic buy of a fairly serious bit of kit, wouldn't it be better to contract out the board assembly, at least for a few runs until you can make a more balanced decision - and perhaps negotiate a discount, or perhaps even find an excellent second hand unit?

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.
Reply to
Tim Watts

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Hi Tim, I used to bring my board to this small shop but the time and cost was not balanced. Either A. I will not get my board by deadline period or B. the cost was like around 20-40 bucks a board per reflow. Plus on my end the time to make sure the board is reflow properly. That why in the mean time I should invest on a 5 zone reflow oven, I have a lot of my client there demand is (TIME)and the faster I get it done and professional the success my business will come. If my investment fail then beat it.

Paul

"You have to risk big to win big"

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Reply to
vtech9815

vtech9815 wibbled on Thursday 11 February 2010 21:58

Unlucky... My old company used to mix contracting out board assembly and doing some in house. Usually larger batches were shipped out but they knew the had the ability in house to handle small runs at zero notice if needed (they had a pick n place machine too). But the contract company were to my knowledge fairly reliable on both time and quality.

So I'll stand back and let someone else who knows what they're talking about give some recommendations :)

Good luck.

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Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.
Reply to
Tim Watts

"vtech9815" schreef in bericht news:v7GdnVDM86AppOnWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...

Elektor offers one:

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petrus bitbyter

Reply to
petrus bitbyter

"Fred Bartoli" schreef in bericht news:4b746929$0$20629$ snipped-for-privacy@news.free.fr...

A number of professionals *are* hobbyists and vice versa.

petrus bitbyter

Reply to
petrus bitbyter

Or a Rival Electric skillet. Like I said, the guys at Sparkfun figured that one out and it works for them.

Reply to
T

What sort of parts are you using?

If you are using semis and passives that's one thing. If you need to solder half inch square inductors and large connectors then that's another.

Here's my "new" machine before installation.

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I needed something this size to cope with inductors.

Reply to
Raveninghorde

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

I'm a small manufacturer. I have a used Philips CSM-84 P&P machine, but the nature of my business is that I make batches of 12 - 25 boards at a time. Having small batches like this done by an assembly shop is very expensive. I got a "GE" chinese-made toaster oven at Wal-Mart, as it was the biggest one they had. I bought an Omega ramp and soak temperature controller on eBay. I tied an SSR in series with the oven's thermostat, and poked a thermocouple into the oven. A first run showed that the boards heated up WAY above the thermocouple temperature, so in desperation to make some boards, I poked the thermocouple wire into an empty through hole in one of the boards in the middle of the oven. I ramp to 180 C in 2 minutes, then ramp to 230 - 248 C (depending on board and solder type) and ramp back down. The results have been excellent! I occasionally get a few joints right near the edge of the oven that don't completely flow, and I know to watch for that. I am using Warton lead-free solder from the UK, it works WAY better than the Kester lead-free I used before, but is a bit expensive. I use some Taiwan leaded solder cream for SnPb boards, and it works well, too. I'm still dialing-in the solder stencil apertures to get rid of solder bridging, but this process works REALLY well in the volumes I do. I would have no problem doing 100 boards a week, assuming they'd fit in my oven. Most of my boards are small enough I can get a couple in the oven at a time.

I have everything from 0805 passives to 0.4 mm lead pitch quad flat packs on my boards. The 0805-size stuff is a piece of cake, I still have to deal with bridging on the fine-pitch parts, but they reflow great with this system.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

That's about our run size (30) on one of the boards. OTOH, it takes two days (one top, one bottom) for the pick-n-place machine to do its thing to 1500 components. ;-)

Are you doing RoHS? We've found that RoHS processes are *very* picky. The corner between burning passive components and poor reflow on "fine" pitch actives, particularly on QFNs, is very tight. Lead processes were trivial.

We don't do anything under .5mm in QFPs or .8mm in BGA but that's not the problem here. It's the passives that tend to burn and QFNs that don't flow well.

Reply to
krw

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