After watching this, I went to WalMart and got a brand new $22 Hamilton Beach toaster oven, used a SSR, China clone Mini Pro Arduino, a $9 China thermocouple with MAX6675 breakout, and used one of the Arduino PID libraries. A 1602 display fits on the front and shows time and temp, and it's designed to allow you to create your own curves (list of x seconds at y temp, 0=done). It worked first time, and every time I tested, and as a bonus the wires on the wire rack of the super cheap toaster oven were so thin that they don't seem to be soaking heat away. I even "fixed" (by reflowing) a CAN board that had never worked properly since I got it. Gotta love when something is this easy!

First class video. Really like the close ups. Really interesting to see the reflow wave move from left to right across the board. Great video.

"Stevie Wonder can solder 1206" :D Love your videos and the way you teach all the different stuff Dave !

At 38:10 the metal underneath is acting as a heatsink. Those three components are directly above it. It's also casting a shadow on the board, preventing as much infra-red from reaching the board at that location.

i just discovered this channel and man i love ur passion for this stuff!

I used an old conveyor style pizza oven for my SMD reflow, worked a treat!

Try put gap between that iron bar tray and the board. Do not put the board directly on that bar, that is causing odd temperature, parts on steel bars are not going hot enough to melt the tin. See it from 38:10 (Pause) Please try to understand my poor English. :)

Wonderful to see how well the reflowing worked on the 0805s on the left. You could really see them center themselves one after the other. This video was a lot more instructive than a 100% success would have been!

55 minutes of awesome just before dinner !

Great video! Very cool seeing those first few devices actually hit re-flow temp. Your son is growing fast so I assume he will start his own kids channel soon. Keep up the great work!

Your videos are really nice, keep up the good work i spent like the last 3 days watching your videos! :)

I started to sweat when it looked like it wasn't working, glad you noticed the problem. Not sure I'd have much use for one but it looks like it worked pretty well in the end.

Great Stuff Dave! Thank you!

What a pity we didn't get to see the reflow result AFTER the recalibration. Still, a good video; well done Dave.

Another great vid Dave, I really dont know how you keep up at this rate, its a lot of work to make these and you make it look easy! Also I need one of those tape measure with all units :)!

When I used to work on reflow ovens, we used klapton heat resistant tape with thermocouples. Typically smaller sized thermocouples give better accuracy, but are higher variation in temperature.

I also recommend going with a Black and Decker Oven with the ControLeo2. I'm very pleased with my build.

salutations from South Africa, brilliant video !!

It won't help for the top elements, but you can put the crumb tray in the bottom slot (above the heating elements) to avoid there being a hotspot and better distribute the heat from the bottom elements. This will allow you to keep the rack in the same position you have it in the video perhaps.

US isn't totally out of luck, most of us have 240v mains in the panel box that is used for things like ovens and electric clothes dryers, could always run a drop for that to the work bench.

Cute junior engineer at 23:03. When will he start doing his own videos Dave ? I really appreciate some of the "fails" you experience as I learn lots more from that than from fully successful tries. Glad you don't edit that out, it is very informative.

Awesome video Dave. I was going to go down this route (actually - was going to modify a chain type toaster/pizza oven). I was scouring eBay for a suitable donor unit when i scored a fully functional Research Inc Reflow oven (all 2.4m x 1.2m x 1.2m & 750kg of it!) for the sum total of $187 and a trip to Brisbane to collect it! Overkill? You betcha - but I will never outgrow its capabilities! Just lucky I had the 3 phase to run it! Keep up the good work :-)

FYI: The AC mains and service in the USA are "220" Volts (center-tapped) -- typically 234 Volts; mine is at the moment 241 Volts. SO, us Yanks are actually not SOL.

Wow that board would look awesome in altium black!

7:52 That's why we wear closed toed shoes while workin in the lab hey Dave :)

Regarding the stencil, you can trim the right and bottom edges to board size, and work bottom up, right to left, so you never overlap a board with solder applied. Add a bit of a 'tape handle' to one of the trimmed sides to give you the ability to lever it up after application.

Why do i LOVE the sound of most plastics and paper being handled through mics and camera mics... wtf

Nice vid. Dave.

I'm glad I found your reviews especially regarding this reflow oven controller. I already have a toaster oven and I'm thinking to buy such controller. Keep up the good work. Oh, btw, don't put heavy objects around your feet! :))

Good work Dave as usual. Small point - that is a convection oven you have there - convection refers to the process of air moving naturally because of heat. Hot air rises so a convection oven is traditionally hotter at the top and cooler at the bottom. An oven with a fan is a fan-forced oven - meaning of course that the fan moves the air around and spreads the heat more evenly.

I designed and prototyped a board with about 120 components, including fine pitch ICs, SD card sockets and so on. I learned a few things as I prototyped many versions of this. Oh, I was using a much less expensive controller from SparkFun that worked extremely well and has a digital display to show you what the temp is and where in the profile it is. Cheaper too. First, older toaster ovens get hotter quicker than brand new ones. An old Black & Decker was about the best I found, so an old toaster oven from a yard sale is better than a new one from your local department store. That said, toaster ovens don't really have enough power to ramp up the heat quickly enough to match the paste profile. They heat too slowly. Next issue is, they cool too slowly. You really have to manually open the door an inch and close it, watching the temp a you go. The rate of cooling is as important as the rate of heating. That all said, I was able to get the oven to come pretty close to the paste profile and by manually opening and closing the door I could hit the cooling profile pretty close. The reflow was nice and the boards worked well. My oven was not a convection oven, but there is a valid concern about how much air those move. You really need to move the air slowly because the parts can in fact be blown off the board easily. I'm beginning a new project and I think I'll be modifying my oven by adding an additional heating element or two from another oven. At that point I'll need a dedicated 20A power circuit, which is fine. I keep thinking I'll add some motorized vents to control cooling. That would be nifty. Finally, Dave never showed us how he cured the problem where components didn't reflow if they were sitting on the oven grill (and the grill sinking the heat away). I never encountered that problem, so I have no suggestion to offer. The best trick I learned is wrapping another in the thermocouple to get a read of board temp as opposed to air temp. I like that, so a thumbs up!

Dave, you should write a slasher horror movie; you already have the perfect tagline: "Don't turn her on... take her apart."

It is most likely using a standard PID tuning method such as Ziegler-Nichols to learn the best P, I and D values. Most tuning methods involve impulsing (basically turn the system fully on) and getting the frequency response.

Doubles as a pie warmer :)

great video!

Severin is one of the dirt cheap household stuff brands you find in hard discounters, here in old Europa.

The Black and Decker Infrawave toasters work far better. You can make your own controller with a $3 Arduino and a few thermocouples if you want to save a small fortune and have a better unit as well. The infrared heaters directly heat the board and are pulsed up to your desired temperature for reflow and away you go...

07:48 Ah, the sound of Aussie builders boots (aka Flip Flops) doing their best...

I havent even gotten INTO making SMD boards yet, but, unless I'm fulfilling thousands of orders, is a stainless steel template worth the cost over mylar? How long before mylar would start to wear or break down?

Hi Dave, I've used a forced convection reflow oven and I've experienced uneven board heating and extremely long profile times. I'll tell you -- for the money this is probably an OK product. I wouldn't expect professional quality out of a toaster oven.

EEVblog now you can make toast in the office in case you get bored of reflowing boards

That oven is screaming for a hacking; built in temp sensor, side mount for the controller, bigger indication light and even a fan cooler to ramp down the temp after the reflow is over... just saying...

First, I am sure that the Beta device works by externally cycling the power to the entire oven. Simple brute force. However this means that the oven must have a cheap "dumb" mechanical controller so that when the external power is switched on/off the heating elements would continue to switch on/off. I would assume that if the oven has a fancy "intelligent" electronic controller and the external power was switched off/on (by the Beta device) that the oven would reset to the off state, preventing external control. Yes?

No idea if this is cleared up in the video, but Severin is a popular manufacturer for ovens of all kinds here (Germany) - I think my mom's microwave is by them.

Dave; I would suggest before you put a lot of boards in the oven; put the drip tray back in which my help to even out the temperature though out the oven. You will get uneven temperatures through out the oven. More calibration me thinks.

I would have placed board in the center of the owen and I would have raised it on two thermal isolating peaces so that there is no heat soak from the metal grill under it. Those owens heat up best in the middle.

It's cooler near the front window (conductive thermal loss + door doesn't have a seal, convection leakage). The second you put the board up front (but did the learning procedure in the middle) I had doubts. I have that near identical oven. I make corn dogs in it though. Anything placed in the front doesn't brown as dark as that placed in the middle/back. Mine is the convection model heat still isn't perfectly even I wouldn't try any board larger than 1/2 square area of the oven, off centered toward the back.

Haha I have been doing an internship for a year in Germany and one of the people I lived with had this exact oven!

Dave, in my experience using solder paste a few months past expiration date results in joints that go bad a few weeks or so after soldering. What I have read implies that past the expiration date the oxides degrade the balls and they don't form uniform crystals when cooling.

Another potential application for this controller would be annealing knife blanks or tool and die blanks that had been manufactured in a small home metal shop and hardened in a forge. Again they can be baked in a kitchen oven with decent results, but the better repeatability you have in your oven the more predictable the process. On another note you might experiment with putting a silpat in the oven or a toaster oven sized pizza stone... It would greatly even out the thermal transfer from just the wire rack.

I want a blue µRuler now !

I would love to see the graph differences with a convection fan.

soldering yum!

Looks like for the US market you just have to switch out the transformer to power the controller's PCB correctly.

The video is still running, but how did you end up fixing the board-above-metal-grill issue? Did you end up putting small blocks under each corner of the board to lift it off the grill entirely? If not, is this something you'd recommend?

6:22 EEVBlog reviews house appliances now? :D great!

38:07 Watching this a bit after date... but I see the fail already and I didn't watch it to the end. The board used for learning lets through the convection heat but the SMD board doesn't, so the components near the edge, which get the most convection heat curling around the edge, reflow the best (but I suspect still less than optimal)

You can place aluminum or copper sheet under your board to inhibit hot spots.

@36:00- I suspect that grate is partially to be blamed for the fail. Look closely and one will notice how the failed parts of the PCB had the grate bars directly beneath it. Personally I learned the hard way not to place boards directly on grates and similar things. I usually try to suspend my boards a few centimetres above the grate/surface. Small balls of aluminium foil works great.

Severin is a player for household stuff in Europe. there didn't build in China like other cheap firms. looks good for the price and it's a beginner kit!

36:45 putting a wood plate underneath, or better some little wood blocks, ore just one, depends on the size of the board. This will help. I´ve gone through this issue as well when putting my board on the plain metal grill of my (dirt crap cheap 39 EUR but good working) oven.

dave i have both 110 and 220 voltages in my basement lab not sure about most peoples labs but I wanted it in there when finishing out the basement

The silkscreen looks a bit ehh, BUT MAN, those boards look GOOD!

I love you man !!!

Does it allow for multiple reflow profiles, eg one for reflowing a PCB, and another for cooking food. One issue with many toaster ovens, is the uneven heating, and convection rarely ever works due to the airflow path, you end up with air blowing past some of the heating elements and sending super heated air directly to one side of what ever you are cooking, thus causing one side of that pizza or what ever else you are making, to burn. This is why when cooking baking certain foods with a toaster oven, you need to bake them in stages and not just preheat to a set temperature and bake for a while, in many cases, you need to heat the item to about half of that, and keep it there for a while, then ramp up the temperature around 5-10C at a time every 2-3 minutes, until you reach the proper baking temperature. (at least thats how Ii get an even bake on those frozen digiorno pizzas) It would be awesome to have a controller that can just have a bunch of different custom profiles. (PS a true convection oven, needs the airflow to never come in direct contact with a heating element, this is why on large ovens, the airflow channels are specifically directed away from any heating element)

Dave, why did you choose a modified toaster oven instead of one of the T-962 IR reflow ovens for sale on ebay?

If you disassemble the oven to mount the probe permanently you can also whack a heat resistant bulb in there. They're dirt cheap.

Nice, At least you could recalibrate it :)

wait a moment....they connected thermocouple connector with thermocouple circuit using normal wires? O.O At least it looks like normal wires, compensating wires for "K" thermocouple are difficult to solder. In that case I'm not surprised by that 7°C offset.

my only problem with lead free solder...I find the joints looks cold and not only that, it takes too much heat to actually get it to flow properly which in turn, the components don't like excessive heat at all

the brand is called serveriiin

I reflowed a couple of laptop graphics cards in my kitchen oven with no worries. Made the damn things work again. Ping! :-P

the ones that didn't re flow were closest to the bars below the board

I may be off but doesn't lead-free usually like to go to ~270c, the temps you're getting would be more suited to leaded solder IMO.

Didn't you shortcut the NTC while you've passed the leads through the copper 'n gold plated hole on the PCBoard ?

Would it be better to trim the stencil to fit the single board, then you could leave the boards as one ?

You could probably make that solder paste, just grate some solder with a file or some sandpaper and mix it with some flux! Easy

Convection: Air/liquid currents caused by uneven heating. The medium warms, it's density drops, it rises, it cools it falls. Convection. This clouds, thunderstorms, thermals. Do not think of it as a negligible factor! Convection currents in boiling water can accelerate upwards at enough speed to send bubbles and drips flying half a meter in the air. Fan != convection. Fan is forced air circulation. I realise oven manufacturers messed this up in peoples heads and are now, funnily enough selling "convection" mode as a bonus feature LOL! The way to tell is to get something particulate based in the oven. Like a burning splint and put it in and see if the smoke quickly rotates around in a swirl until it dissapates to an even fog.... which is what I would expect will happen. It will not rise and sit at the top. To be honest the effect might be better with just bottom heating. Technically the elements at the top would interfere with convection and probably create several currents. Besides! I don't really think the air temp has as big an impact as sitting 3 inches from a 0.5kW infrared blasting resistive element. I can bet if you put your hand in there when they are up to temp it wouldn't be the air temp your hand would be complaining about, but the radiative heating. NileRed or Codies lab could test that. Would close IR heating elements reflow solder in a vacumn? I know PCB houses use nitrogen, but I think that's more like a "covering gas" ,such as argon in welding.

I have a hard time with those small ass smd chips, tweezers and me do not agree! I need to try the vacuum holders.

By the looks of this unit I rather prefer Rocket Scream's Reflow Oven Controller Shield because of their on-board LCD alone.

Do you know if the T962 Infrared Ic Heater Automatic Reflow Oven Smd Bga 180×235mm is any good ?

23:05 XD aw man, the kid already sighs the same as his dad

Center of the oven has most uniform heat.

Anyone know of a good open source alternative to that controller? They no longer sell the v2 and the v3 is now 230 EUR. I would have bought the v2 in a heartbeat - but the v3 I find too expensive for what it does.

Is this the pukka link you referred to please. The prices don’t seem to match? us.beta-layout.com/estore/order_product_details.html?wg=147&p=408

44:45 - Is that ruler made of glass fiber PCB? How cool is that?

could the reflow issue be that the board was not close enough to the top element?

you are holding the twizzer upside down.

Thank you very much for the "dummy board" idea! Why didn't I think of that? I'm just stupid.

I wonder what would happen if one just skips the controller and let it heat up with the board in it and then turn it of when it reach the right temp?

Hi, this might be a stupid question but how do you got to 230°C if the oven is set to a max of 130°C? Am i missing something? Cause i guess the oven itself got some thermister going on to set its temperature so it would only go to, lets say 90°C. Thank you for replies.

The Oven is 1500W at 230V and the controller rated upto 1500W at 230V. My question is as Dave's AC is at about 250V is that pushing the spec of the controller with that oven?

Maybe probe cords make some door gap that affects the process

@EEVblog what is that lil board board used for?

And you can set the correct temperature profile of your pies!

It doesn't look like the transformer manufacturer (Gerth) makes a PCB mount version that has 110/120 vac primary ... however it would not be hard to hack another one into place to get it to work.

7:40 It's called "justice". :D

i'd kill for one of those green u currents, only 4 how exclusive is that?.

12:40 The stainless steel stencils might last for thousands and thousands of boards, but who's going to solder such numbers manually anyway? At home you use a reflow oven for SMALL series, so mylar is good enough. When you want thousands, you let the pcb manufacturer/pick&placer/whatever handle it.

It doesnt help when your sensor is in a different place than the board, especially with a non convection oven.