Homebrew PCBs

>> some time ago I visited a large SMD assembly house,
>> and I remember the guy touring us  mentioning that the ovens
>> ( quite a few 3 metters long ) were the card is soldered when
>>  traveling inside it, has a totally controlled, very sharp and
>> fast heating and latter cooling, that should follow some rigid
>> temperature curves in order to preserve the components.
>>
>> I am looking for this information before deciding to go on on the 
>> project.
>>
>> regards
>>
>> jjose


Hi Jjose

Have a look @ the "tech reflow controller" from Silicon Horizon

http://www.thesiliconhorizon.com/images/techFXreflow.pdf

I'm using it for 2 years now with a small low cost "quartz oven" (20 bucks 
at Target) . It's probably the best price/performance ratio I've seen, 
better than the Elektor one (As I own those two babes in my shack)

The heating curve is fully tunable, and you can even use this system to 
"dry" large IC's before soldering (heating cycle @ 90\ufffdCelsisus during 24H). 
With a computer driving the gear via USB cable, you can manage as many 
temperature curves as you want. You only need to be able to create Excel -or 
OpenOffice speadsheet- files that define the time/temperature params.

After building a reflow oven, the next step is to find a solder dispenser 
(on ebay for eg.)... :-)

As far as I know, many ham radio in the UK have adopted this technique (and 
this very same process control item). You'll probably be able to find some 
of them on the forum section of Silicon Horizon's web server


Regards
Marc