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…

Solder Two Boards At Once With This Dual Reflow Plate

Homebrew reflow projects generally follow a pretty simple formula: find a thrift shop toaster oven or hot plate, add a microcontroller and a means to turn the heating element on and off, and close …

Tour A PCB Assembly Line From Your Armchair

Those of us who build our own electronics should have some idea of the process used to assemble modern surface-mount printed circuit boards. Whether we hand-solder, apply paste with a syringe, use …

Want Better 0402 Reflow? Consider These Footprints!

Assembling with a stencil is just that much more convenient – it’s a huge timesaver, and your components no longer need to be individually touched with a soldering iron for as many time…

Internal Heating Element Makes These PCBs Self-Soldering

Surface mount components have been a game changer for the electronics hobbyist, but doing reflow soldering right requires some way to evenly heat the board. You might need to buy a commercial reflo…

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…

Versatile Reflow Oven Controller Uses ESP32-S2

[Maker.Moekoe] wanted a single controller board that was usable with different reflow ovens or hotplates. The result is a versatile board based on the ESP32-S2. You can see a video of the board&#82…

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…

Mystery Effect Causing LEDs To Glow During Reflow

Sometimes you notice something small that nevertheless you can’t explain. [Greg Davill] found himself in just such a situation this week when he noticed some green LEDs glowing dimly when ref…

Using A PCB To Reflow PCBs – Take 2!

It’s not too hard to make your electronics project get warm. Design your traces too small, accidentally short the battery inputs together, maybe reverse the voltage going to your MCU. We&#821…

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…