Soldering with a Toaster Oven

nullset sent in a link to the Seattle Robotics Society about soldering in an unconventional way. Instead of the traditional soldering iron, Kenneth Maxon has successfully used a toaster oven to solder surface mount parts. The "magic ingredient" that facilitates this is a water-soluble solder paste. I wish I'd thought of this back when I had to solder one of those *ahem* aftermarket accessories to my playstation, since the whole process looks easier than trying to hold a soldering iron steady.

Ding!

[B3ryllium]

Your motherboard has finished. Don't forget to ground it properly!

Hooray for surface tension!

[RalphBNumbers]

I'm thinking that's what makes this work.

I wonder if this could be adapted for mass production? Not having to individually solder pins would have to speed things up. The error rate is a little high for production, but I'm sure it could be improved with a little engineering.

Re:Been done

[PD]

And toaster ovens are so expensive these days.I wonder if Target has a 30 year financing option for these ultra expensive devices? [target.com]

Re:Hooray for surface tension!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm, you might be able to use this technique in a production environment -- you would probably want to use some robotic handling equipment to load the bare boards on a conveyor belt, then apply the solder paste with a stencil to avoid solder bridges. While you're at it, you might as well build some robotic parts placement device (maybe call it something catchy like "pick and place"). If you really wanted to get extreme, you could use a computer controlled oven so you could pre-program the temperature profile or tune it for a specific board design and then use some sort of statistical process control to fine tune everything to get those yields up to where you want them.......

The henderson's family dinner

[MoeMoe]

Mom: Kids, dinner's ready! Kids: Oh boy mom! Whatcha got cookin in the oven? Mom: You're favorite... home made, roasted to perfection Intel chips (Pentiyumms?)

And if their toaster oven breaks...

[MarvinMouse]

They can just put their site on slashdot, and let their overheated server sauter for them.

RE: Bake 30 Minutes at 350F

[Destoo]

Yes.. I can see the recipe.

Ingredients:
one graphic card
two memory stick
solder and paste to taste

1. little solder there
2. chip here and here.
3. a dash of flux there.
4. in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.

DING!

OH NOT! That was 350F, not Celcius!!!

Anyone want a byte of my overmelted Board?
I call it "GeForce FX", the FX stands for "Flambee Xtra".

no peeking!

[Erris]

Seriously though, wouldn't it be cool if someone modified a laser-pen (or appropriately set up fibre-optic light source) to serve as a soldering iron?

Yes it would be cool to get watts worth of heat from a milliwatt source.

No more fumbling with hot-metal iron pens. Shutter the light and it's cold!

That's true! When your eyes quit steaming, you'll quickly tire of soldering things by sense of touch and smell.

what's so scary about a soldering iron, anyway?

[foog]

I've been planning to try this the first time I get a board run by one of the "3 for $60" circuit board houses. Note that it shouldn't be too hard to add decent temperature control to a $30 toaster oven, though the mods would likely exceed the cost of the oven.

THAT SAID, WHAT IS IT ABOUT SOLDERING THAT STRIKES FEAR INTO PEOPLE???

I wish I'd thought of this back when I had to solder one of those *ahem* aftermarket accessories to my playstation, since the whole process looks easier than trying to hold a soldering iron steady.

This technique isn't a substitute for learning to use a soldering iron. It's just not. "Maybe if I do this complicated, tricky thing with a toaster oven, I won't have to use (shudder) a soldering iron!!!"

Just to get things straight here, a few things I've had to explain to people in the last year or so:

Reflow with a toaster oven will not substitute for learning to solder.

Conductive epoxy will not substitute for learning to solder. (it's for making connections to things you can't solder, and is more difficult to work with than solder)

"Solderless breadboards" will not substitute for learning to solder.

Buying lots of alligator clip jumpers is no substitute for learning to solder, either.

Conductive pens will not substitute for making circuit boards

Am I leaving anything out?

In other news...

[BluedemonX]

...they've also figured out a way to make toast with a soldering iron.

Real men don't use SMD.

[evil_pb]

"Plus (if you're careful) you won't damage components because you're not heating them with several-hundred-degree heat like a soldering iron does."

Yeah but where's the CHALLENGE? That just takes all the fun out of garage tinkering, trying to solder components onto perfboards without burning up a) the components and b) your fingers.

SMD may be the future, but it's for weenies...