Hello,
I've seen Ian using one of these small hot plates in a video http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shi ... 26294.html (http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-ship-new-Electronic-Hot-Plate-Preheat-Preheating-Station-946C-220-110V/2037026294.html)
Since I can not place a large pizza oven into my work room I was planning to get a hot plate. Does someone know if these can be manipulated easily in order to add controlling temperature abilities to the device?
Is someone using one of them and how satisfied is he reflowing his boards?
Thank you very much in advance,
Good day Adnc,
Why don't you simply get a toaster oven (with convection) and add some controls? This will yield excellent results and would be in the same price point as the hot plate... but would give much better and consistent results. As for controllers... check out:
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/02/reflow-chateau/ (http://hackaday.com/2015/02/02/reflow-chateau/)
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/11/toaster- ... ntrollers/ (http://hackaday.com/2014/10/11/toaster-oven-reflow-controllers/)
I made my own controller, but also recently purchased a controller from Zallus ... and it was like $90 and works great.
Cheers,
Sam
Hi Sam,
thank you very much for your answer. I've seen Wills reflow oven which looks really nice. Indeed it might be a much better solution but since lack of space in my tiny lab I had the idea with the hot plate.
Do you think the results with a toaster oven would be better?
Cheers
If you are only doing a few boards here and there, then it's easiest just to hand solder them with a normal soldering station and tweezers, I've done lots of things like that, even fine pitched 0.5mm pitch TQFP devices with a couple of hundred pins.
You can get good results with a Toaster over or a Fry pan (Skillet), but the skillet does get hot spots, so it's best to add an aluminium plate about 3mm thick to even-out the heat if using that method.
Sparkfun did a few interesting articles on both the Toaster Oven and the Frying pan and they preferred the Frying Pan (Skillet). Worth checking out their articles and controller, though use Kit Ryan's software if using their controller and I'd suggest a Solid State Relay with heatsink, rather then a mechanical relay that they used.
Thank you for answering.
Actually the only reason I want to use temperatur regulated reflow soldering is because of the WS2812B. I've successfuly soldered with a 5mm aluminium plate on our home ceramic oven 4 layer pcb's even with qfn's - also with skillet and an aluminium plate inside, where I removed the pcb once the solderpaste starts melting. This way I mostly had my soldering under control untill I wanted to have these nice WS2812B. Some of them get damaged whenever I do it that way. Soldering with a normal soldering station works without problems. Obviously these leds are too sensitive in terms of temperature.
Cheers
[quote author="adnc"]Hi Sam,
thank you very much for your answer. I've seen Wills reflow oven which looks really nice. Indeed it might be a much better solution but since lack of space in my tiny lab I had the idea with the hot plate.
Do you think the results with a toaster oven would be better?
Cheers[/quote]
Good day Adnc,
You are most welcome!
A suitable convection toaster oven does not take up much space... indeed probably a little more than a hot plate, but not overly so. As for which is better? I have not use a hot plate, but given that one would need to manually monitor it, etc leaves me to believe that a automatically controlled toaster oven would yield superior results. Remember that solder paste should really follow a temperature profile to be used correctly. Using a toaster oven with a controller can easily follow whatever temperature profile you wish. If you plan on making boards regularly I would recommend going the toaster oven route with a suitable controller. The results are really impressive.
Cheers,
Sam
[quote author="Sleepwalker3"]If you are only doing a few boards here and there, then it's easiest just to hand solder them with a normal soldering station and tweezers, I've done lots of things like that, even fine pitched 0.5mm pitch TQFP devices with a couple of hundred pins.
<snip>[/quote]
Good day Sleepwalker3,
You are quite right in that hand soldering can lead to excellent results. However, I found that using a stainless Stencil, solder paste, and a reflow toaster oven takes about the same time... but yields much better results... plus the boards look a lot better, as there is less solder used on the small discretes (i.e. 0603 parts).
Ever since I found a source for inexpensive Stainless stencils ($20 for unframed, $40 for framed) I rarely hand solder prototypes unless there are only a few components.
Cheers,
Sam
Ever since I found a source for inexpensive Stainless stencils ($20 for unframed, $40 for framed) I rarely hand solder prototypes unless there are only a few components.
would you like to share your source for stainless stencils?
[quote author="adnc"]
Ever since I found a source for inexpensive Stainless stencils ($20 for unframed, $40 for framed) I rarely hand solder prototypes unless there are only a few components.
would you like to share your source for stainless stencils?[/quote]
Good day Adnc,
Sure, no problems. I use sitopway in China (sitopway.com) and I deal with Kevin. They are excellent and usually I have my stencils in about a week including the shipping time (2 days for the stencil and 4-5 day shipping via DHL). Shipping is around $20-$40 depending on the number of stencils and whether they are framed or not (i.e. weight and size dependent). They will soon be celebrating their Chinese New Year and so they will soon be closed until the end of the Month.
Cheers,
Sam
@Sam512bb - yes Stencils are certainly the way to go if you're doing a few, but in my case it's mostly changing chips on very large boards that are already populated, so re-soldering that way becomes a lot more restricted with what you can do and impossible with a toaster oven or frypan.
@adnc - Smart-Prototyping http://http://smart-prototyping.com/ do cheap stainless stencils with or without frame, PCB's etc. and a number of the guys here use them and have been really happy with the results, so just another one to add to the list.
A good controller can be used on either an oven or a frypan (providing the controller can handle the power of course). Whatever way you go, don't use the oven/frypan for food after that.