Soldering with a Toaster Oven 252
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! (Score:4, Funny)
Bread in Toast Out (Score:2)
Seems simple enough, where can I buy one?
Toaster, the most extreme machine (Score:2, Interesting)
(I regretfully ask)
Re:Toaster, the most extreme machine (Score:2)
(I regretfully ask)
Well... mine seems to struggle with coffee - all those sparks and flashes can't be good. Marshmallows are tricky, too... ;-)
Re:Toaster, the most extreme machine (Score:2)
(I regretfully ask)
A: Making Bread
Console mods (Score:2)
what do you mean unconventional? (Score:5, Informative)
sorry but industry has been doing the solderpaste->heated oven dance for years now.
it's unconventional to use a hand held iron unless you are doing board rework.
Re:what do you mean unconventional? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you guys think Ball Grid Array packages are mounted on a board?
Which reminds me of this humorous episode where a guy pulled down the oven from the shelf and cooked his lunch in it, not knowing what it was... and when we learned what had happened we all just about shit a brick. He didn't get lead poisoning or anything though.
Re:what do you mean unconventional? (Score:2)
Being a conventional oven
Opposed to a convectional oven.
Which is which, I dunno...thats womans work!
Re:what do you mean unconventional? (Score:2)
/.ed after 1 post - MIRROR (Score:3, Informative)
Re:/.ed after 1 post - MIRROR (Score:2)
Solder Paste!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't this paste have a higher resistance than the solder we know and love? Couln't a soldering iron be used to heat it with greater efficiency? Does it have any use outside of SMD?
Maybe I'm just weird, but I won't part with my soldering iron any time soon. SMD may be cool, but it doesn't have the "cobbled togethor" look of a traditionally etched and soldered circuit.
Re:Solder Paste!? (Score:3, Informative)
This page has actually been around for a while. It's seems a pretty good idea, though I've never tried it.
Re:Solder Paste!? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it wouldn't have a higher resistance, at least not significantly more (or less). It's still just basically solder.
As for uses outside of SMD - no, not really. Traditional rosin-core, or whatever else floats your boat, is best for through-hole.
However, through hole is a pain in the butt. It's also impossible to use throughhole for more advanced circuits. Through-hole is a dying technology. It's terrible noise-performance wise, space wise, and in solderability. SMD is terrific - you just need to get used to it.
It also takes a fraction of the time to solder this way, and (done properly) reflow has the distinct advantage that an idiot can do it. The parts will simply wick to their proper locations. It's (mostly) foolproof. 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.
Real men don't use SMD. (Score:2, Funny)
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...
Re:Real men don't use SMD. (Score:2)
The amazing thing about SMD is all that you can do with it, and ESPECIALLY if people get good at using common items like a toaster oven. Then it becomes feasible for people to "garage tinker" up an entire computer.
Which is not out of the question.
Especially when you can get simple PC boards for something like $20 - in quantities of 1.
Re:Solder Paste!? (Score:3, Informative)
There is some prep work, among which are cleaning the board/pads with some sort of solution (I was told alcohol) and the use of what appears to be a microprocessor-controlled iron with a flat tip (looks like an L, the long end of it is used like a spatula). Cannot recall the type of solder, but it's in the form of a paste that's easily applied.
She started by soldering two pins on opposite cor
Bull (Score:2)
I personally miss the the gradual disappearing of through-hole work, because I could debug it and fix/mod it. Can't do anything interesting with SMD.
I'm glad I wasn't convinced of that before I tried my first hobby SMD design project [qsl.net]. SMD boards are great -- you can hand-solder chips with 0.65mm lead pitch without too much grief, and unlike most garden-variety through-hole PCBs, you have access to every component and connectio
Hooray for surface tension! (Score:3, Funny)
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:Hooray for surface tension! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, ok, they don't use toaster ovens...
Way to fry components. (Score:2)
Solder melts at around 350 degrees, the maximum storage temperature for ICs is around 140 degrees F, and 200 for mil spec chips. Heating the whole board and components to 350 for long enough for the solder to melt will destroy the chips.
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Way to fry components. (Score:5, Informative)
--buddy
Re:Way to fry components. (Score:2)
Especially if you consider t
Re:Way to fry components. (Score:2)
Wow you know absolutely nothing about electronics.
everything you own that has surface mount electronics in it has gone through this process. Either Via an Oven or using superheated air or finally Infared light for heat. (Yes, I have used an IR rework station to get a BGA
AMD? (Score:2)
"No, seriously guys, my computer is bleeding to death."
Not so unconventionnal (Score:2, Informative)
google cache link (Score:2)
alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
No more fumbling with hot-metal iron pens. Shutter the light and it's cold!
no peeking! (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:there are IR soldering devices (Score:2)
500 Watts, wow! That would be a hell of a diode. You can get CO2 lasers like that now, but they will fry your eyes out and you can't put them in your pocket. Considering a 25 watt [watechcenter.org] model can damage your eyes, I'd be afraid of what a 500W model can do.
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:2)
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:2)
Looking at the R500 Solder Paste specs the peak temperature shown is 225C (437F). Paper burns at 233C (451F) and a magnifying glass can burn paper easily on a sunny day, so I would at least expect the magnifying glass approach to work.
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:2)
So trying to heat it directly wouldn't work because heat gets sucked into the lead too quickly...
Sounds like you would have to use a hybrid approach. Heat the tip of something non-heat-conducting and touch that tip to the lead you're soldering. You would probably have to do this repetitively, in a pulsed manner - the tip acts as a small heat capacitor (for lack of a better word) that you're heating and cooling.
Hmmm... I wonder if one could design a heat pu
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:2)
When you're done with it you wouldn't have to wait long for it to cool down before putting it back in a tool-kit or pocket.
Ah well, it was just an idea. Do with it what you wish; it's in the public domain now.
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:2)
(Aside: a Joule is a Newton-meter.) What you're saying would be true for a regular soldering iron where you're wasting energy heating several grams of metal (and keeping it hot all the time) when the business end is only a few mm^2 surface area. We're going to have to wait for compact fuel cell technology to come out before that becomes practical.
What I am suggesting is an active delivery mechanism, so the heating only needs to happen on a few milligrams of heatable metal or other contact material. Yo
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:2)
iirc, you can also use it to peel traces off of circuit boards. (it also melts sand, ashes, chars wood instantly...)
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:2)
Specs sheet sez "leaves bright/shiny solder joints after reflow", which begs the question how does the powder refract/absorb light before reflow? Powders tend to exhibit different optic properties from their more macroscopic solid equivalents.
In any case, it could serve as a simple automated trigger mechanism. Stop applying heat/light when it "gets shiny"...
So what... (Score:2)
We.., *I* can solder SMPs with a *blow drier*. Ergo, I rule.
Re:So what... (Score:2)
Hmmm...the period key seems to have climbed up my keyboard. Make that "Well" instead of "We.." It looks like I will need to *seriously menace* that troublesome key with the blow drier until it descends.
The henderson's family dinner (Score:2, Funny)
And if their toaster oven breaks... (Score:3, Funny)
Surface-Mount Soldering Techniques (from a pro) (Score:5, Informative)
SMT reflow ovens, essentially, are identical to the ovens used in Pizza Hut where they stick a pizza in one end and it is taken through heating zones via a conveyor and pops out the other side done. In SMT reflow, the zones are controlled in such a manner that the holy 2 degrees C rule is never broken. (I used to joke that on the day I get fired, I was going to stick a frozen pizza in our reflow oven just to see what'd happen.)
My method of soldering IC's to a board is simple and IPC approved: Place the IC on the pads; center it up as well as you can. Using a regular soldering iron, "tack" two opposing corners of the IC to the lands with conventional solder. Don't worry about bridging. Then, apply a small amount of liquid solder flux to one side of the IC, bathing the legs. Then, apply a small bead of solder to the end of you iron and GENTLY wipe this bead across all the legs, from pin one to pin whatever. (Yes, it's counter-intuitative,) and you'll see as if by magic that you'll get very few solder bridges. Apply more flux if required. Clean tip of iron completely of solder, and just touch it to solder bridges. The excess solder will "sweat" to the iron. Clean iron tip again and repeat. When done, clean flux with laquer thinner or similar substance. (If you use no-clean flux, you could just be gross and leave it there if you wished, removing excess with a paper towel.) I find that a simple toothbrush dipped in thinner does wonders.
Or, you can stick stuff in your wife's toaster and take chances that way
Take care now ~!
Re:Surface-Mount Soldering Techniques (from a pro) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surface-Mount Soldering Techniques (from a pro) (Score:4, Informative)
What's IPC? FWIW, I'm definitely no expert, but I did take a course in surface mount soldering at the local community college (just for geek knowledge reasons :), and we were taught to do it the way you describe.
Anyways, the course has been useful... I fixed a cellphone that had a tiny capacitor come loose (and I mean tiny--0.5mm x 0.5mm x 1.0mm). Also replaced a broken 0.5mm pitch FPC connector (admittedly, I did lift a pad while removing the old one... it was a pad that wasn't connected to anything though; just a small bit of metal).
Re:Surface-Mount Soldering Techniques (from a pro) (Score:2)
Re:No Spoon-Feeding for You (Score:2)
Re:Surface-Mount Soldering Techniques (from a pro) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surface-Mount Soldering Techniques (from a pro) (Score:2)
No one would argue with you on the first part - that's 100% correct, though it's probably overkill - in general most components can take thermal shock without any problems. In fac
Re:Surface-Mount Soldering Techniques (from a pro) (Score:2)
Jon
Slashdotted (Score:2)
Slashdotted after 1 post? Oh, my! I guess they're serving the site off a toaster, too. ;)
Working Cache (Score:2, Informative)
Try it at home but... (Score:5, Informative)
Using Solder Paste, you can use a hot air gun to place components on a PCB as well. A woman I know at work (Celestica) made a video demonstrating the SMT solder process using a hot air gun - it came out quite nicely and her joke on customers was saying that she followed the board through the oven (it was vapor phase at the time). Many customers were impressed with her tolerance to extreme heat.
As somebody noted, most components will stop working at 140C and in the oven they will go over 200C - they will survive, but the PCB should not be powered up until the PCB has cooled to room temperature.
If you're going to try this at home, a few comments:
1. Solder paste will only stay reliably sticky for 30 minutes. Make sure that you have your components ready and the oven at the primary temperature before you break the seals on the syringe and start applying paste. Make sure that you don't have more components than you can place in 20 minutes.
2. Solder "paste" is made up of finely ground solder held together by flux. Both the solder and the flux are poisenous and during the solder process you will see a build up of flux on the inside of the oven. Along with this, the solder may form "balls" that can be thrown off the PCB. An oven used for SMT experiments cannot be used for food preparation afterwards.
3. Solder paste must be capped and refridgerated when not in use. If you are storing it in a fridge where food is stored, make sure that it is in something like a tupperwear container and well marked (especially if children are around). It looks like pate or liverwurst, but will sit in your stomach like a ball of lead (sorry, couldn't resist).
4. The PCB coming out of the oven is very hot and will take several minutes to cool down. I've heard of a number of people that have built SMT boards in a toaster oven, only to forget oven mitts and tongs to handle the hot PCBs and ended up dropping the PCB on the floor and burning themselves. One genius I heard about was sitting down when he pulled the board out of the oven without any mitts or tongs... Make sure you have something like a barbeque grill ready for the PCB to sit on when it comes out of the over.
5. The PCB should be as dry as possible. Before putting on paste/components, you might want to put it into the over for a day or so at the lowest setting to try and bake out any water that has gotten trapped in it. Let the PCB cool before applying paste.
6. The PCB pads should be "HASL" ("Hot Air Solder Leveled") for best results (do not try this on bare copper and you may have to experiment with gold finishes).
7. I would suggest using parts with leads on 0.050" (50 mil) centers, 0805 chip components and SOT-23 transistor and diodes. Anything smaller will make applying the solder very difficult. The article indicates the author used smaller spacing components, but not how many and how the PCB was laid out.
8. Do not use surface mount connectors. Unless you are very comfortable with doing your own soldering, you will find that it is difficult to get a uniformly strong joint on every pin.
9. If you are designing your own PCB, you can use Protel's "EasyTrax", which is an MS-DOS Command Line program that can be downloaded for free from a variety of sources (you should be able to find where on Google). I have added IPC standard pad layouts for the library components.
I've done it a couple of times with an old toaster oven and it works surprisingly well. Just make sure you plan out what you are going to do and if there are any terms that I have used above that you are unfamilia with, make sure that you investigate them before trying it out on your own.
myke
Re:Try it at home but... (Score:3, Informative)
It's available for Windows/Linux, so download away...
CowboyNeal (Score:2)
I tell you, the world's gone mad.
I tried this without much success (Score:2, Interesting)
I was pretty disappointed. There were tons of solder bridges (where the solder connects two pins together), some pins that didn't stick reliably,
ahem. (Score:2)
eating solder (Score:3, Insightful)
A Paint Stripper heat gun (Score:2, Informative)
what's so scary about a soldering iron, anyway? (Score:2, Funny)
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 so
Re:what's so scary about a soldering iron, anyway? (Score:2)
Am I leaving anything out?
Wire wrap. You can be not so good at soldering and still get some pretty complex circuits working - and changes/repairs are often easier than soldering, especially on prototypes.
How to do it by hand (Score:2)
SMT assembly techniques [solarbotics.net]
Re:How to do it by hand (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Since it's /.'d... (Score:2)
Flux (Score:4, Informative)
If you're not using surface mount components (like mod chips) you're going to have to use a soldering iron anyway.
The key to making any iron work easy (even surface mount!) is to use plenty of flux.
Get a seperate container of just flux and don't be afraid to use it. It makes a WORLD of difference.
Goodwill (Score:2)
Old hat. Back in the '60s or '70s, by cracky... (Score:2)
The board had some hysterical number of layers (for the time), like in the 30s or 40s. And it was literally paved with 14- and/or 16-pin DIPs. On BOTH sides.
Now this was a problem, because DIPs have feet that go through holes and are mormally soldered on the OPPOSITE side of the board. To get maximum density the DIPs ha
Seymour Cray (Score:2)
Now that I think about it, if it was Cray and integrated circuits, it would have been AFTER he left Control Data. He first used integrated circuits in the Cray I.
He used discrete components before that, because in those days the speed advantage of discrete transistors and lower-resistance wiring sped up the logic more than the wider spacing of the parts slowed it down, so he could make faster machines that way. The crossover poi
It's only a matter of time... (Score:2)
Re:Been done (Score:2)
Re:Been done (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Been done (Score:3, Informative)
If a toaster oven isn't good enough, get a larger one. http://www.atco-us.com/oven.html
Don't forget that doing this in a toaster oven will potentially contaminate the oven with lead. Think twice about using the oven for toast after this. Traditional solder and solder paste is Lead (Pb) and Tin (Sn) based. If it is not good on your walls, it probably isn't good in your toast.
Re:Been done (Score:2)
Re:Bake 30 Minutes at 350F (Score:2)
powerbook anyone? (Score:2)
RE: Bake 30 Minutes at 350F (Score:4, Funny)
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".
Acts of Gord (Score:2)
Rus
"Accessories" aren't just for piracy. (Score:3, Informative)
Since installing the "accessory", I've bought maybe five or six import games from my local import game store. This import game store charges an arm and a leg for those rare games.
If not for my "accessory", I would be patronizing Software E
Re:"Accessories" aren't just for piracy. (Score:2)
I picked up an imported demo disc from Hong Kong on eBay, and it runs great using the same boot disc that pirates use to play their bootleg games.
The Gamecube is the same way - Datel is releasing a boot disc that allows imported games to play on US consoles. OTOH since the GC uses a nonstandard disc format, it *can't* also be used to play pirate games.
I do agree about other systems though. I've got a chipped PS2 so I can play PA
Re:"Accessories" aren't just for piracy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you have to destory the original for a backup copy to be legal?
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:2)
Region codes don't make any sense if the product isn't even available in other regions... duh!
Just because all YOU could think of was pirated games, doesn't mean that's all they're good for.
Grow up, stop suckling off the party-line and digest your own FUD.
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
{
flamesuiton = true;
Yes, nobody would ever use a mod chip for anything but piracy. The big homebrew ps2 scene is just a myth, right?
I can't beleive I'm feeding an obvious troll here, but some of us are big into application development for the ps2 and that requires a mod chip. God forbid anyone program for a peice of hardware the own.
}
Sony makes a PS2 mod chip for homebrew (Score:3, Informative)
but some of us are big into application development for the ps2 and that requires a mod chip.
It requires either an independently produced mod chip, or the official PS2 mod chip produced by Sony [playstation2-linux.com].
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:2)
I miss my T-Mek game.
Do you realize... (Score:2)
Re:Do you realize... (Score:2)
Seriously, I wouldn't be against using the chip to defeat region locking as suggested elsewhere in this thread. I would encourage the use of the chip for the purposes of backup only to continue to exercise "fair use" rights. I would definitely frown upon those that us the same chip to pirate games.
Personally I do not own a mod chip. I have not even looked into it so unfortunately
Re:Do you realize... (Score:2)
Of course it's not "stealing". It may be a copyright violation.
They violate the DMCA only if... (Score:2)
putting your local video game stores out of business, you thief.
Your assumption, that mod chips are useful only for playing infringing copies of proprietary game software, is not valid. Mod chips and similar console accessories are useful for developing homebrew software; when marketed solely for that purpose, they do not violate the DMCA. The shops that have busted for selling mod chips either 1) advertised them as useful for playing "backups" or 2) did not bundle the mod chips with a copy of a develop
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:2)
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:2)
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:2)
why? that's just stupid.
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:3, Informative)
I think you've allowed yourself to get caught up in the scene too much to even consider what people are doing with their stuff. I
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:2)
I've heard of some flash cards being seized by customs via some DMCA clause invoked by Nintendo and the person who ordered the card being out their money.
Re:Putting people out of business, eh? (Score:2)
Re:Toast-R-Oven (Score:2)
You know, I never really knew ovens warmed stuff up. I always heard they were used in WW II and were really a bad thing.
But, theres never a better way to figure something out then to start it going, and leave, and come back after its done to clean up the mess
(Realizing the humour of your comment I give you props)
Personally I use Tostitos brand.
Re:Freenet Mirror (Score:2)
Re:What's in that solder? (Score:2)
How about having kids with only two eyes?
Very good point that some may have overlooked.
DO NOT USE THE TOASTER OVER FOR FOOD COOKING AFTER MELTING LEAD INSIDE IT
Lead fumes from a previous soldering session can vaporize off the oven walls, stick to the food (and all dishware), and poison you slowly - Lead poisoning is NOT fun.
GOOGLE [ Lead Poisoning ] [google.com]
Thank you for bringing this up.