Looking for good reflow oven in the $500 range

JohnR2010

All, I'm in the market for a reflow oven and just came across this oven on Amazon ChefStore Reflow Oven $517. Does anyone have any experience with it or a recommendation on another oven?

DaveJenson

on ebay: $253

http://www.ebay.com/itm/T962A-Infrared-SMD-BGA-IC-Heater-Automatic-Reflow-Oven-Soldering-Area-300-320mm-/140609016665?hash=item20bcf35359:g:OAcAAOSwiONYLmpx

JohnR2010

Thanks Dave. I have read a lot about that oven and to be honest it sounds like I need to do a bunch of stuff to it (firmware upgrade, change fans, remove tape that catches fire) before it is usable.

Did you have to do any of that stuff??

T Chap

works out of the box for me.

tonyp12

I burned a few pcb to get right time curve on the T962A, especially 0.8mm boards on stand-offs for double side stuff.
That smell won't go away for days.

SRLM

A convection toaster oven will reflow just fine. That's what I've used, and it's what we use at work.

RickB

SRLM

What brand and model? Stock or modified? Details, details...

Rick

T Chap

Sure I used the B&D Exact Heat for years, but I gotta tell you that sitting there for 6 minutes typing in temps for each segment of a profile gets real old. You certainly don't want to be just turning it on 450 and coming back later. If you make boards on a regular basis get an oven designed for boards with programmable profiles.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

SRLM wrote:

A convection toaster oven will reflow just fine. ...

The key word here is "convection." I have a non-convection IR toaster oven that I use for reflow soldering. It works great for the tiny boards I customarily solder. But the one time I tried it on a larger board, parts of the board overheated, and in other parts, there was no reflow. An internal fan would've provided more even heating.

-Phil

SRLM

I used a stock Breville BOV800XL Smart Oven 1800-Watt Convection Toaster Oven (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001L5TVGW/). I don't bother with setting temperatures to try and fit a profile. Rather, I turn it up to maximum (which is right at the higher end of my solder paste recommended temperature). I once sampled the heating profile of this method, and compared it to the solder paste datasheet, and it was close enough for me.

I was lucky enough to have one of my assembled boards put on an X-ray machine. There's a QFN Propeller in the bottom middle of solder_a.jpg. The blobs that look like solder bridges are SMD capacitors on the other side of the board.

RickB

How good is the insulation between all exterior surfaces and the interior ? Can you hold your hand on any surface for very long?

That is one expensive toaster oven.

Rick

JohnR2010

Those xRays are awesome! I didn't know you could actually see inside the chip. very cool thanks for posting!

I ordered the oven that Dave Jenson and Tony P. have above and if it doesn't work I will send it back. Seems like the newer ovens work better so i have my fingers crossed. I'm not going the toaster route i have enough stuff I have to "make work". Thanks everyone for the input!!

T Chap

There are some dead spots in the 962a, I think towards the very front within an inch or so from from door, you can have a component a half inch away from another component, one not even melted. Once you find the dead zones you can mark the areas on the drawer.

JohnR2010

T Chap wrote: »

There are some dead spots in the 962a, I think towards the very front within an inch or so from from door, you can have a component a half inch away from another component, one not even melted. Once you find the dead zones you can mark the areas on the drawer.

Thanks, I plan on doing several test / calibration runs to get a feel for it.

JohnR2010

Update: My oven showed up yesterday and works perfect so far. Just did a test with a 3" X 6" board with a few test components on the far edges and every one soldered perfect! Why in the world didn't I get one of these earlier? Up to this point I have been using an air rework station to make my boards and what a pain that has been. Blowing those little 0603 components all over the place is history (I hope)! No smell or smoke all is good. Next test is to drop my propeller and EEprom on there and see how they do. Thanks again for the advice!

T962A from Amazon I know I paid more than I needed to since I bought it from Amazon but I wanted to have no issues if I needed to return it. The date code on the unit was 16/7 so I'm guessing that was July of last year (2016).