>Anyone have any experience or have colleagues who have experience using the
>Chinese-made reflow soldering ovens such as those being sold on the evil
>auction place? The one I've looked at is item number:262955348183 (Model
>T962).
My concern (mainly because I have no experience with infrared) is that
the black chips and components would get hot faster than the shiny
pins and solder paste.
I have an oven that I built using a tabletop convection oven and a
programmable timer. It works great but it's using hot air to do the
heating.
>
>My eyes have become the major challenge to producing the one- or two-off
>projects, since many of the parts that are available today are only made in
>SMD packages. I realize that placing them onto the board still remains a
>challenge, but at least with a proper oven, I won't have to hold a soldering
>iron steady enough to build the boards.
The neat thing about reflow is that if you put the proper amount of
paste on each pad, the surface tension of the solder will pull the
part or chip in line with the pads.
I've developed an unconventional technique for pasting 0.5 mm pin
spaced ICs. I put the chip on its back and use my pressure/vacuum
paste dispenser to lay a solid stream across each side of the chip.
I then hold the chip with some pliers while I wipe the other side with
a Q-tip. This removes paste between the pins. Drop the chip in
place, populate the rest of the board and reflow. Both my vision and
my steadiness of hand have declined over the past few years and this
is how I compensated.
>
>This model seems to be big enough to handle all the boards that I want to
>make, so that is a plus. Just wondering if this model produces good boards
>with no unsoldered areas, damaged components, etc. If it can consistently
>produce good boards, I'll take a chance on one of them. Reading the
>Chinglish instructions is scary enough , but maybe I can figure it out well
>enough to make it work.
That thing is cheap enough that if I didn't already have an oven, I'd
buy one just to test it. It would hurt only a little to bin it if it
didn't work.
John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address