mini hotplate time!

[Mykle James Hansen]

Hi all,

I shipped 99 units of my Pocket Integrator project last week!  W000t!

Cyber City Circuits in Augusta, GA were the assembly house I used.

I gave them 117 boards worth of parts; they gave me back 100 good boards 

and 17 that didn’t pass QA. 

Today I’ve been debugging and reworking some of those 17 boards, 

and I want to enthuse to you all about this awesome 

rework tool that David Ray at CCC hipped me to:

Maybe I am the last person in Portland to find out about this

tool, but just in case I’m not … this is a teeny tiny 3cm x 3cm hotplate,

with precision temperature control.  I can set this to 310 degrees C,

position some area of my board on top of it, and in 60 seconds that

area is all flowing & ready to have parts added, subtracted and adjusted. 

When I’m done, the rest of the board is still cool enough that I can

lift it away with my fingers.

I find this sooooo much nicer for rework than a full-sized hotplate,

especially since PI has a couple of through-hole parts that prevent

the entire board from lying flat on a plate.

It’s the MHP30 from DFRobot. There’s plenty of videos and 

such about it online.  Point is, this thing is making rework

easier than ever right now.  I’m sure there’s some projects where hot

air is better (two-sided boards for instance!) but for what I’m

doing this thing is the bees’ knees.  It was cheap, too!

FYI,

-mykle-

[Tony Jones]

On Sun, Nov 26, 2023 at 9:11 PM Mykle James Hansen <my...@mykle.com> wrote:

It’s the MHP30 from DFRobot. There’s plenty of videos and 

such about it online.

There appear some some really cheap ($10) "clones" of this on AliE.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805700737293.html

I've no clue how well they work.

Tony

[Aaron Eiche]

I saw one of these at Supercon a few weeks back. They area SUPER small, and surprisingly effective. I saw someone reflowing a board a seat away from me. 

I’m uncertain if it was the same manufacturer. 

On Nov 26, 2023, at 9:11 PM, Mykle James Hansen <my...@mykle.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I shipped 99 units of my Pocket Integrator project last week!  W000t!

Cyber City Circuits in Augusta, GA were the assembly house I used.

I gave them 117 boards worth of parts; they gave me back 100 good boards 

and 17 that didn’t pass QA. 

Today I’ve been debugging and reworking some of those 17 boards, 

and I want to enthuse to you all about this awesome 

rework tool that David Ray at CCC hipped me to:

<IMG_8029.jpeg>

Maybe I am the last person in Portland to find out about this

tool, but just in case I’m not … this is a teeny tiny 3cm x 3cm hotplate,

with precision temperature control.  I can set this to 310 degrees C,

position some area of my board on top of it, and in 60 seconds that

area is all flowing & ready to have parts added, subtracted and adjusted. 

When I’m done, the rest of the board is still cool enough that I can

lift it away with my fingers.

I find this sooooo much nicer for rework than a full-sized hotplate,

especially since PI has a couple of through-hole parts that prevent

the entire board from lying flat on a plate.

It’s the MHP30 from DFRobot. There’s plenty of videos and 

such about it online.  Point is, this thing is making rework

easier than ever right now.  I’m sure there’s some projects where hot

air is better (two-sided boards for instance!) but for what I’m

doing this thing is the bees’ knees.  It was cheap, too!

FYI,

-mykle-

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "dorkbotpdx-blabber" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to dorkbotpdx-blab...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dorkbotpdx-blabber/E2CD23A0-42EC-40BB-A270-73012DCFAE36%40mykle.com.

[Joe FitzPatrick]

@mykle, congrats!!

The MHP-30 is, in fact, awesome. I use it regularly, in favor of both a 8x8" hot plate and a reflow oven.

Here's a quick video of soldering a bunch of LEDs on one: https://chaos.social/@securelyfitz/110958662249312433

I'd be very wary of the inexpensive ones. Pick two of (powerful, cheap, safe), for example this one that plugged straight into mains power:

That said, I think I'm going to buy one of those $15 clones and see how good/bad they are...

-joe

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dorkbotpdx-blabber/E102CE8B-D0CC-48F9-961F-F1CD6A70B800%40gmail.com.

[Tony Jones]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 11:12 AM Joe FitzPatrick <joe...@joefitz.net> wrote:

I'd be very wary of the inexpensive ones. Pick two of (powerful, cheap, safe), for example this one that plugged straight into mains power:

Of course.  This said - my experience across hundreds of orders on AliE is that - a relatively high #orders (111 for the one I linked to) and a decent review %age often can work out OK.  One of the reviews of the one I linked to mentioned "Cool Original replica, there is Open Firmware".