Toaster Reflow Oven
Toaster Reflow Oven
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I woke up one day with a realization: I need a solder reflow oven as I'm moving more towards surface mount components. The only issue was that a commercial one would've set me back 250-1000 George Washingtons. I began designing one with one constraint: make it for less than $100.
I woke up one day with a realization: I need a solder reflow oven as I'm moving more towards surface mount components. The only issue was that a commercial one would've set me back 250-1000 George Washingtons. I began designing one with one constraint: make it for less than $100.
I got this toaster oven from Target for a ridiculously cheap price of 20 dollars. I basically needed a heating element inside of a metal box with no fancy controls.
I got this toaster oven from Target for a ridiculously cheap price of 20 dollars. I basically needed a heating element inside of a metal box with no fancy controls.
The build process was pretty simple. I went off of the sketch I drew below.
The build process was pretty simple. I went off of the sketch I drew below.
The plan was to control the heating elements with a solid state relay (cheaper and easier to use than a mechanical relay) and have feedback from a K-type thermocouple fed into a microcontroller which could follow solder paste temperature curves.
The plan was to control the heating elements with a solid state relay (cheaper and easier to use than a mechanical relay) and have feedback from a K-type thermocouple fed into a microcontroller which could follow solder paste temperature curves.
You can see the solid state relay on the right attached to an old CPU fan I had lying around. In addition to the electrical components, I added some ceramic insulation in order to mainly avoid burning myself, but also to allow the oven to heat up more quickly.
You can see the solid state relay on the right attached to an old CPU fan I had lying around. In addition to the electrical components, I added some ceramic insulation in order to mainly avoid burning myself, but also to allow the oven to heat up more quickly.
Here's a front view. I put in an OLED screen to display relevant information. The tinfoil on the door is for added IR insulation, which surprisingly made a huge difference in how fast the oven got up to temperature.
Here's a front view. I put in an OLED screen to display relevant information. The tinfoil on the door is for added IR insulation, which surprisingly made a huge difference in how fast the oven got up to temperature.
To test out the oven, I got an extra UD2.7C DRSSTC driver board I had ready by applying solder paste with a syringe and placing components accordingly (Note: the board is not fully populated as I ran out of the extra components I bought. This just served as a test run).
To test out the oven, I got an extra UD2.7C DRSSTC driver board I had ready by applying solder paste with a syringe and placing components accordingly (Note: the board is not fully populated as I ran out of the extra components I bought. This just served as a test run).
sstg-44C2078E-D7C4-449B-940B-CB7D4B18B730.movYou can see the exact moment the reflow occurs, which is pretty cool.
You can see the exact moment the reflow occurs, which is pretty cool.
I went ahead and tested the oven with an extra board I had from the LED Cube project, and the differences are quite clear. The left is solder paste with an oven, and the right is hand soldering.
I went ahead and tested the oven with an extra board I had from the LED Cube project, and the differences are quite clear. The left is solder paste with an oven, and the right is hand soldering.
Here's the source code, in Arduino:
Here's the source code, in Arduino:
oven.pdfPage updated
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