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Hot plate for reflow soldering I was searching for a god way to solder SMD components when I came across Sparkfun’s tutorial for reflow where they recommend the hot plate for hobby work. The search continued to find a good hot plate to use and while searching for that I came across this build made by Jeff Keyzer. So I realized the hot plate can be a build project of its own. :)  Hardware The hotplate is a 10 x 15 x 2cm aluminum block with 2pcs 250W 8mm x 80mm heating elements. It is mounted with high temperature thermocouple insulators to the rest of the control box. I found a type of glue that works up to 1200 C to hold the screws as the isolators had no threads. Opposite to the heaters are the K-type temperature sensor mounted. The control box is made of aluminum sheet. I made it at metal workshop at school 15-20 years ago, I have forgotten what was originally meant to be mounted in it but I am very satisfied with the result I got for this build. The grill around the hot plate is made of perforated aluminum sheet. It does not get hot and is very nice to have when you should move the PCB without moving the small components. I found a kit with a PID Temperature Controller, a 40A Solid State Relay (SSR), Heat Sink and a K temperature probe on eBay. I also bought a 60 min time switch and a temperature fuse. The time switch is if I forget to turn it off it will auto turn off after 60 minutes. The temperature fuse is if the temperature is too high inside the control box it will also shut everything off. I found the fan among my old surplus electronics and thought why not mount it to make sure the temperature is not too high but I’m not sure if it is really needed or not. The hot plate reaches the 200-210 C I need for reflows within a few minutes and then holds the temperature very nicely.          |
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Split Flap Display Building a split flap display. |
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Word Clock Showing time/date with words. |
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Hot Plate For reflow soldering. |
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Jenkins Build Status Sign Show the nightly build status. |
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Light Painting Stick Paint images with light. |
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Vattenkylning Vårat vattenkylnings projekt.(Swe only) |
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Links Some useful and cool links. |