Tony Nixon wrote:

> I am finishing up a project I started awhile back that uses SM parts on
> a small fiddly PCB. I'd be interested knowing how the oven and paste
> work out. I might have to set up something like that myself. I takes me
> about an hour to solder the parts on this small PCB and the result is
> not very professional looking and is bound to lead to problems.
>
> Is the Farnell Part number - 149-968
> What oven brand do you use?
> Does this method work on double sided SM components?


Hi Tony, some good posts so far on this hey! I'm
a real beginner with this and learning as much
as anyone from the expert SMT guys posts. :o)

The oven we use is a Ronson combi-oven, it has
2 bar elements on the bottom and two on the top.
It was cheap and 1500w, and works great. We do
4 boards in 5 minutes with good repeatability.
I could put 8 boards in, but can't be bothered,
we only need to make small batches of 12 or 16
boards anyway.

Heating is very localised above the elements,
but our boards have all the chips within a 2"
square so this works fine. I don't think we
could solder a large board, not in one go anyway.

It's working great for this particular project,
a 28 pin SMT PIC and a few 8-pin SMT chips all
close to each other. We then hand solder the
PTH components (my preferred method). It heats
the small boards completely, so would work on
all SMT components top or bottom, but it sounds
scary putting parts on the bottom! Alex G said
he was going to put up some pictures of his
equipment soon.
-Roman

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