USB-C Powered Hotplate Is Not For Food

Once upon a time, it was deemed mostly silly to try and schlep power from a computer’s ports. Then it was kind of amusing to do so with USB, and before you knew it, we were running whole lapt…

A Compact SMD Reflow Hotplate Powered By USB-PD

When it comes to home-lab reflow work, there are a lot of ways to get the job done. The easiest thing to do perhaps is to slap a PID controller on an old toaster oven and call it a day. But if your…

Working With BGAs: Soldering, Reballing, And Rework

In our previous article on Ball Grid Arrays (BGAs), we explored how to design circuit boards and how to route the signals coming out of a BGA package. But designing a board is one thing – sol…

Throwback: USB Hotplate Used 30 Whole Ports

Once upon a time, USB was still hip, cool, and easy to understand. You could get up to 500 mA out of a port, which wasn’t much, but some companies produced USB cup warmers anyway which were a…

PCB Hotplate Has Integrated Heating Element Traces

Normally when we talk about PCBs and hotplates, we’re talking about reflowing solder. In this build from [Arnov Sharma], though, the PCB itself is the hotplate! The idea was to create a compa…

Controller For 946C Hotplate Adds Reflow Profile Upload Over BLE

Reflow hotplates are a wonderful tool for PCB assembly if you can keep your designs single-sided. The 946C hotplate in particular has been on hackers’ radar for a while – a 200x200cm wo…

Reflow Hotplate Teardown Uncovers The Bare Minimum

[EEforEveryone] is trying to find a good hot plate for reflow soldering. After trying one cheap unit, he got another one. He was a bit underwhelmed. The grounding was suspect and the bed wasn&#8217…

Iron Becomes SMD Hot Plate

Few things have changed our workshops more than surface mount components. In 1980 it would have been strange to see a hobby bench with a microscope, hot air equipment, tweezers, and all the other a…