I hope that this makes the controller more useful among the hacker world - now you can tweak it yourself (not that it needs tweaking to be a great controller in the first place! :-) ).
We have determined that this controller can also be fitted to the T962C reflow oven as well as T962 and T962A.
Yes, it it completely programmable using the menu. You'd just need to set the desired temperatures for the soak and peak stages of the cycle. I can program the controller with a good starting point for lead solder reflow if you remind me at time of purchase that you're using lead solder.
You can edit: Ramp up rate Soak temperature Soak duration Peak temperature Peak duration Ramp down rate
You can edit, save and load up to 32 different sets of profile settings. By default, all profiles are the same settings, which are a for pb-free soldering.
There are a number of reasons that our controller upgrade is the way it is... first, the original graphical display is basically surplus since the graph doesn't match the actual temperature in the oven (and the GUI is really not very usable in the stock controller) and the time displayed by the original control is not correct too...
Personally, I like function over form! The controller performance is where the bulk of the effort was concentrated, there is an easy to use menu for adjusting parameters and the controller tracks the profile very well. I prefer text based displays for editing parameters, and the controller can easily be attached to an FTDI cable to a computer to log the temperature data and display a graph (this little application is coming soon as an extra).
The hardware is designed to be accurate above all else, the thermocouples are measured by dedicated ICs with cold-junction compensation, for the best accuracy. Quality parts and boards are used too...
The price reflects the amount of work that went into producing the controller, we have spent time and money on correcting problems with someone else's design(!) and we need to recover the costs of doing this. You really do get what you pay for with reflow ovens, if the control was better in the T962(A) ovens in the first place they would be quite good, but unfortunately, they are really let down by the original control.
We feel that the upgraded ovens now perform as well as the $$$$+ ovens that the likes of Madell sell, so the price of a T962/T962A plus one of our controllers really does represent a good deal.
My first post here - I hope it goes down well... ;-)
My company, ESTechnical, have just launched a controller upgrade for the T962 and T962A ovens, because we found the controller to be rather poor. The heat was very uneven and the oven burned our boards whilst still not reflowing the solder in some places.
The controller upgrade is easy to fit and dramatically improves these ovens. Using our new controllers the oven is very easy to adjust to suit your needs and the heat is much more even thanks to careful control.
You can save and recall up to 32 profiles to/from the EEPROM memory of the controller and it offers PID control of the fan and heat output.
These controllers are available on ebay, but I cannot post a link in my first post... The ebay number is 190827607864 and I will post a link when I am allowed to by the forum!
