Cheap reflow oven install#
Drill a hole into the thermal compartment and use two wrenches to install the thermocouple. Fortunately, it’s not a new table, and I have kids, so my wife didn’t notice. My oven had a piece of bent metal that scratched my kitchen table. These little plugs pull out to access the screws underneath. The next trick is the LRF (little rubber feet). The bottommost screw on the back isn’t a Phillips, it’s a “star”-presumably to keep morons like me from cracking the case open and getting electrocuted. Removing the oven’s screws is one of the more interesting parts of this project. It took me most of another day to get a reasonable control heating profile (lead-tin) out of it. It took me less than a day to integrate the system. I spent $153.85 (including shipping) with Auber and a bit less than $50 at Walmart for a Black & Decker toaster oven with an internal convection fan (to minimize hot spots). Wow! Total cost (including a spare thermocouple and the toaster oven) would be right about $200. Auber also sells the thermocouples (with a 4-inch probe tip), 40-ampere solid state relays (SSRs) for plenty of margin, and SSR heat sinks, all cheaper than I found elsewhere. I looked around some more and found another company, Auber Instruments, that sold a similar product (SYL-2352P) that was American-made and had much better documentation, for the same price.
Also, the unit that would best fit inside the oven housing was out of stock. Ain’t Moore’s Law great? Unfortunately, the documentation left something to be desired-it was poorly translated into English from Chinese. Last time I looked at such things was a couple years back, and they didn’t go for less than about $500. He pointed me to a company, Annex Depot, that sells PID ramp/soak controllers for about $75. I was just starting to put together schematics when a friend at work ruined the whole project (thanks a lot, Ryan). I even got so far as selecting most of the parts. I spent some time putting together block diagrams. In other words, I would be able to flow standard lead-tin solder and the “green” solders, and do some custom curves for components that require it (like big, honkin’ FPGAs). This thing was going to be fully buzzword 3.0 compliant, with three preset control curves (lead/tin, RoHS, and one manual-entry curve), an LCD on the front, and RS-232 communication to monitor the temperature profile from a PC. It turns out that I’d need an “ice reference” of some sort. I decided to use a PIC microcontroller (from Microchip Technology) and a type K thermocouple as the temperature-sensing device. This was comforting, as it meant that the toaster oven would get warm enough to do the job. I searched the Internet and found some similar projects. The plan was a simple one: Design a controller. The solution was obvious: Build a reflow oven!įirst off, let’s get all the disclaimers out of the way: This project involves dangerously high voltage at high currents! Be careful!
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