Geppetto Electronics: Toast-R-Reflow

Any maker can learn how to use reflow soldering to make things with surface mount components. The first step is building your own reflow oven by converting a toaster oven. We will demo the entire process of homebrew reflow.

What inspired you to make this project?:
I tried to do surface mount by hand once. I made an SMD version of one of my products and bought the components to make one (what must DigiKey have thought when they got an order that included single 0805 resistors?). I took it to the rework lab at the office and it took me two hours to build what in through hole I could do in 20 minutes. I swore off the whole thing. But then Chris Howell, who I knew from OpenEVSE said, "Oh, no! Don't do it that way! Use reflow!" and an hour of Googling and I decided to give it a try. I saw lots of folks had done toaster oven conversions, but most used high current SSRs. I didn't see anyone do it with triacs, which I found quite curious. I also saw a lot of folks mixing microcontroller circuitry and line voltage switching on the same board, which I think is foolish. So I wound up designing my own. And it's been going strong for a year and a half. I even made and contributed one to the Hacker Dojo last year.