On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 18:30:53 -0700, Jim Tellier wrote:
> FWIW, *me too*!  I happened to go into FRYS this afternoon, and by
> chance wandered down the "toaster oven" aisle (!)... I saw an el-
> cheapo "Maxi-Matic" 650W, 2-element job on sale for $18 (!).. so I
> said, hey.. if it ain't up to snuff for SMT reflow, I can always use
> it to toast my bagels in the morning!!

***** PLEASE ***** Don't EVER use your toaster oven for food after it's
been used to solder SMT assemblies. There are very bad things in the
solder paste mixture you don't want to ingest and once they have been
vaporized inside the oven you can't get rid of them!!!

> Well, this little guy gets up to
> 300C in 7 minutes flat.  It's actually just a little slow getting
> from ambient to 100C, but I'm thinking that's not going to matter too
> much.   I'm just going to do a little controller with a thermocouple,
> PIC and a triac; putz with the temp profile after I settle on what
> kind of solder paste I'm going to use, and just see what kind of
> result I get. This whole approach appeals a lot to me, since my
> eyesight isn't what it used to be, and the idea of hand soldering
> fine-pitch stuff just seems likely to cause a lot of frustration. So,
> I'm on the experimental path!   I'll post my results soon!

You might want to visit the Yahoo E-Z_Bake group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/E-Z_Bake/

There are some good tips and member experiences in the archives there.

This thread has sort of spurred me on to finish the controller for my
oven. When I'm done with it, I'll most likely post pictures and maybe
the code/hardware for it there.

Matt Pobursky
Maximum Performance Systems

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