Toaster Oven Reflow Technique

See also HotplateReflowTechnique.

Introduction

This page describes how to reflow solder surface mount printed circuits using a cheap toaster oven. It owes a great deal to Nophead's Cooking with Hydraraptor blog post.

Equipment

The toaster oven we use is this 900W one from Argos in the UK. It costs £25.

You will also need an Arduino to control it. Just about any Arduino will do; we use the Arduino Diecimila, because we happened to have a few lying about.

Finally, you need a solid-state relay so the Arduino can turn the oven on and off, and a temperature sensor that will do up to 250^oC.

We use this solid-state relay from Farnell, and a thermocouple plus thermocouple amplifier (see below). Alternatively you could use the same types of thermistors that RepRap uses for its extruders as temperature sensors - the temperatures are about the same.

Control

This is the circuit diagram of the thermocouple amplifier.

Video

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