Reflow oven reddit. I also found that my reflow controller that I programmed in an afternoon was neat, but also completely unnecessary. Mar 13, 2025 · Do you have any way to verify the oven was actually hitting the target temp? I reflowed some lead free boards this weekend with almost exactly the same temps and times and had no issues. Any opinions? For the price, is it a good option and will it do the job? Basically to solder smd onto PCBs for prototypes before starting mass production. The key was to get toasters with quartz rods, rather than the metal rods. Do both work equally well? If so, why use hot plate instead of heat gun, is it because it is a little We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Hi All, I'm looking for a benchtop reflow oven, wondering if anyone has any recommendations? I'm looking for something in the $3-5k range. It works beautifully. I'm kind of lazy, so could I just put the surface mount stuff I want soldered into a non-modified toaster oven until the paste melts and then take it out? Do I really need to be able to . Dec 5, 2019 · I converted an oven with Controleo 3 as well and I'm satisfied. The ability to get a stencil, put paste down, put the components on the PCB and reflow it makes everything just so much easier for prototyping. I unfortunately dont have the time for that. Hello, I'm looking to buy my first reflow oven and have heard of two primary options: Whizoo Controleo3 Puhui T-962A 300×320mm 2020 Edition SPECIFICALLY Simply put, my main concern with the Whizoo Controleo3 (from the perspective of a novice) is the process of having to build this thing for the same price or more than the T-962A, risk wiring something wrong/getting stuck on a instruction step Are DIY reflow ovens really worth it? I've seen videos of people taking toaster ovens and adding in a thermocouple and a microcontroller to convert them to reflow ovens, but how well do they work? And what's the difference from one of those to a $5000 reflow oven? In my shopping for reflow ovens I came across a thread on the EEVBLOG forums where people discussed the AE-5010 being a more reliable oven than the T962 for home-use. Besides the other toaster ovens, you could try to see if you can get an old but working commercial reflow oven. There are many factors that are going to make this harder. Looking at some videos it looks like even a child could reflow common SMT layouts, at least with an oven, but I've also seen people Hey everyone ! I'm searching for a reflow oven for my small buisness. I just buy a reflow oven T-962 (I will upgrade soon). after a few hours of research i found 3 answers : 1 T962 A very cheap seems to work well with a few upgrades 2 Custom toater 3 Expensive western machine Are there any model similar to the T962 but slightly better ? I can't find any of them circa 500 € / $, any idea where to find one ? Thank you I also spent a fair amount of time looking at ovens and the various diy projects. I purchased the larger T-962C and it does not have the power to heat evenly. So I pulled off the heatsinks, fans, cleaned off the thermal paste with isopropyl alcohol, set everything aside and preheated my oven to 350F. "Reflow hot plate" is cheaper than that, but heat gun seems the cheapest and it takes the least amount of space. Most of the things that I've come across have a modified toaster oven to control the temperature of the oven. There seem YouTube videos of both people's using such hot plate and people's using a heat gun to solder SMD parts. It seems that "reflow oven" is the best, but they are expensive. It blows away the T962 and clones as well as the Reflow Master. And the Controleo3 is probably the best reflow solution you can get in this price range. Archived post. I've done some custom quad-VL6180X time of flight boards, and custom devkits for the ESP C3 MINI. We would like to upgrade to a proper reflow oven, but with articles like this, and many people complaining of reliability and other issues with "cheap" ovens, it makes me nervous. But after getting it I tested it by "manually" pwm'ing the heating element by turning it off and on to follow the reflow pattern, and it followed the pattern very well. At this stage I'm thinking the next step is a reflow oven. As people have said, toaster ovens are probably the cheapest option. “Dark toast” was an equally good setting for PCBs. I did upgrade it with the Whizoo controller, but it actually preformed worse For hand assembling a few boards you don't need any reflow solution, in 99% of cases regular soldering iron is enough and the rest can be done by hot air. com I use a cheap toaster oven with the mains being controlled by a Reflow Master + solid state relay and it works really well. Reflow ovens on Amazon Hey - anyone have any experience with any of the reflow ovens being sold on Amazon (the ones in the 300-500$ range)? Or re-phrasing, which reflow oven would you recommend in the sub-500$ range, short of building my own? Used a really nice reflow oven but didn't pay attention to plastic connectors and my dumbass pulled the board out while the connector was melting clearing all the parts off the board The other option would be a reflow oven, but apparently vapor phase soldering is superior in many aspects. There is some calibration to perform with the firsts PCBs, but after that you have a better reflow oven than chinese IR for the same price. Thanks! I've been running a small electronic engineering business for about 2 and a half years and I'm finding myself wanting faster turnaround for prototyping and small batch production than I can get by ordering the boards pre-made. I’m able to get surprisingly close to the recommended reflow profile for my solar paste and i haven’t had any reflow related issues so far. I’ll visit a distributor next week that will show us the equipment, but I wanted to collect some opinions here first. Even lead free reflow soldering are successful every time. Aug 23, 2025 · Ever get frustrated with reflow ovens that heat unevenly or take forever to reach the right temperature? I’ve tested dozens, and the constant struggle to nail those perfect solder joints ends when you find a reliable, precise machine. I'm looking to get my first board printed, with some 0402s and esp8266exs. I have one that I've been using for a few years and it is as good as it gets for desktop style reflow ovens. Do y'all recommend any other controllers or ovens? I'm willing to do the T-962 Firmware and Hardware upgrades if it's really worth it, but I'd prefer to have a plug-and-play option. Good luck and don’t do this to your fairly new card, it’s definitely not the best option but surely a good one for a 20$ card and even more if you don’t have a reflow oven. I've been warned against the cheaper infrared ovens (apparently they tend to heat unevenly?) which is fine I'm going to spring for an IR reflow oven or toaster oven conversion. You can either just use it as is and guesstimate the heat/timings or use any number of the toaster-oven-to-reflow-oven tutorials/kits. It takes a lot of time to dial in the process (even the commercial ovens/hotplates need that!). It's more practical if you have a single sided pcb to place that on a heat plate at 30-60°C under the reflow temp and use the hot air gun to pull that area up to reach the reflow temperature. Reflow ovens can be either convection-based or infrared-based. However if you're thinking about production quantities you need to consider the entire process and doing it manually just doesn't scale. I can get JLCPCB assembly, but the potential long term savings of doing this at home is looking really appealing, and I'm happy to invest in an air station, hot plate or convection oven. I ended up buying a simple black and decker oven with a plan to convert it using a diy package. I got a double side PCB I want to solder : On TOP side : 1 x LQFP-64, 2 x ABRACON crystal, 1 x micro-USB connector, 1 x SOT-23-6 and about 20 x 0603 On BOTTOM side : 20 x 0603 and 1 x DFN-6 I never use reflow oven I wonder how to solder one side without desoldering the other side. So my solution now is I use tin foil to create a Do you agree with that person that I should wet with the 99% isopropyl? Or do you stand by using flux? As far as what I use to reflow, I built a reflow oven from a Controleo3 reflow oven build kit. I posted this in r/AskElectronics a few days ago but realized later that this sub might be more suitable. I bought the AE-5010 and have reflowed quite a few SMT boards with it. I understand I need two reflow, for example first reflow on Frankly, I love my toaster oven, but if it was too slow, I would just go for two toaster ovens. I would like to stay away from modifying a toaster oven. Then it is twice the speed. Preferably something of good quality, made in the US/CA/EU etc. Convection-based ovens use hot air to heat the PCB and components, while infrared-based ovens use infrared radiation to directly heat the components and solder paste. See full list on smtinsight. You do run some risk trying to reflow surface mount parts (?) with just a hot air gun. I made three little pyramids from wadded-up aluminum foil and used them to support the board, making contact with areas that had no visible solder joints or traces. I set the whole thing on a foil-lined baking tin and baked it for 8 minutes. I haven't done much work with SMD, but I've been looking at using toaster ovens as reflow ovens. The best low cost reflow oven I've had was just a black n decker toaster oven (had 2 elements on top and 2 on bottom). In many cases you VEVOR Reflow Oven T962: yes or no? Hi I need to buy a soldering machine I'm looking for this one from VEVOR. Investing into a dedicated oven/large hot plate/skillet/etc makes sense only if you are doing a lot of SMD assembly yourself. I've been wanting to go with a Zallus controller for a while, but they're always out of stock. hjxk aegry juy v08 dxql 1e h9x o8jmdcn wv4md6hg 9m5g