You probably dont give a damn but does someone know a way to log back into an Instagram account? I was dumb forgot the account password. I appreciate any tips you can offer me!

@Jack Bowen instablaster :)

@Kolton Jase I really appreciate your reply. I found the site through google and im in the hacking process atm. Looks like it's gonna take quite some time so I will reply here later with my results.

@Kolton Jase It worked and I finally got access to my account again. I'm so happy:D Thanks so much, you really help me out !

@Jack Bowen You are welcome :D

👋👋😆

There isn’t any magic, just try 😬👍🏻

@@makermoekoe hi

That’s just the foot of a regular cloths iron; either 120v or 240v depending on which country it’s from. As you approach your final project, you should have the knowledge to make one by yourself. However, if you look at around the 3:45 mark, you can see the whole setup; and see how he did it. This project involves working with live mains voltage; which can injure or kill you (and while you’re dying, it will hurt the whole time)... so, before plugging anything into the wall, have your electronics instructor review your project for safety. Good luck with school! 😉

For you or anybody else looking: I recommend that you order a stencil together with your PCB and apply the solder paste with a spatula. This method saves a lot of time and does not require dispensing equipment. You can tape your board to a flat surface surrounded by other boards of the same height, and tape off one end of the stencil so that it acts like a lid. If you're not comfortable with this setup, I can recommend buying a cheap stencil printer. This is a device that you can use to fix your board and hold the stencil for you. It's basically just a metal plate with a smaller hinged plate to hold and set the stencil. I use one from the "Beta Layout Reflow Kit V3" and for such a simple device, it makes applying solder paste much easier. This does not mean that you will need the oven or anything else from the kit, just an similar stencil printer. Just make sure you store the solder paste properly and keep your equipment clean and it will work wonders.

Temperature is max. 195 degrees here. Once it reaches the max. Temp it will turn the iron off. Whole process is about 4 minutes

The peak temperature, and how fast you want it to get there, depends on what you’re soldering, and what kind of solder paste you used. Lower temperature paste, obviously, puts less stress on the parts being soldered; but may have some drawbacks for certain applications (however, if you’re using a cloths iron to make your boards, you’re probably not in the kind of position where that would matter). 😉

Some sand in a pan does it nicely also.

At about 3:45 or so you can see the whole setup. However, it’s kinda dangerous; with exposed live mains voltage. If just looking at it doesn’t make it obvious to you, then I would really suggest that you buy a pre-made unit especially for soldering. I say that not to be discouraging; but out of concern for your safety... 120v will bite you bad; 240v will bite you REALLY bad. Pre-built units aren’t that expensive. 😉

Um... I hate to be discouraging; but the setup here is a bit dangerous - there’s live mains voltage exposed. Until the setup becomes obvious to you, I would really recommend buying a pre-built soldering hot plate. They’re not too expensive. 😉 Also, cloths irons aren’t noted for having even temperature across their face (which is normally OK because your shirts etc don’t care); but units designed for soldering - well, at least the good ones - do have a relatively even heat distribution.

@@darkwinter6028 x

github.com/makermoekoe/Hotplate-Soldering-Iron

@@kylehaston6662 Same safety problem: exposed mains voltage. The SSR, heating element, and power supply NEEDS to be covered, or sooner or later you’re going to get shocked by it. Also, as noted both by my original comment and that GitHub repository, heat control is… not great. Workable with some care and experimentation (use a thermocouple probe to find the hot spots, and move the board around with a tool of some sort to try to even out the heating of the board). By the time you have added up the price of all the parts, you’re getting awfully close to the price of a pre-made one with a big aluminum plate. Normally, I’m all for hacking stuff together, if for no other reason than to be able to say “I did it myself!”, but in this case the significant issues are piling up rather quite a bit…

@@darkwinter6028 "Same safety problem" because it's the same project. I've had success with a hot air gun. Will try this method as well. You're right: don't touch mains voltage or you'll get zapped.

It’s not a phase-angle relay, it’s just a Fotek solid-state relay; and there’s no feedback to the microcontroller to do phase-angle modulation. Consequently, all the firmware is doing is switching it on and off for at least several whole cycles... perhaps even whole seconds at a time. If you look at around 3:45 or so, you can see the whole setup, including the SSR, power supply for the microcontroller and lcd, and the control board.

​@@darkwinter6028 You are switching AC with slow PWM and ignoring the phase? My understanding is that that is generally a bad idea, because if you switch the load off instantaneously and there is any kind of inductance, it will create crazy high voltage spikes. Perhaps not that bad with a (mostly) resistive load. I use phase angle relays in my solar water heater setup. (They're very expensive)

@@ChristieNel I’m not the video producer; I’m just a guy who’s fairly familiar with the parts visible in the video... but, yes; without some sort of suppression components an inductive load will generate a big reverse voltage spike if abruptly shut off. I’m not sure how the Fotek SSR handles the issue; I’ve got a handful of 40A ones here; I should probably try it and see what the resulting waveform is. One possibility is that the photo isolator has a capacitor across it, and keeps the turn-off speed from becoming excessive; another is that the switching element is avalanche rated, and lets current flow above it’s avalanche voltage threshold; or there’s a bidirectional voltage clamp device in there (like two back-to-back zeners, but uprated to handle the rigors of snubber duty). Edit to add: I am highly suspicious that the heating element in that iron’s foot is a ceramic one, with only a few turns, if any at all. 2nd edit: or they’re using something like a triac which inherently doesn’t shut off until the zero crossing. It is an AC relay, after all. Should probably test that, too... see if running DC through the switching side of the SSR results in it not shutting off until it’s unplugged. 🤔

@@darkwinter6028 Good analysis. If you slow down the shutdown, you'd massively increase the MOSFET switching losses. (I've blown many MOSFETs this way) But if the cycle period is low enough, it might handle the thermal dissipation. It's possible that the SSR has a triac arrangement. I know they are used in phase-angle relays, but I had not considered that they could also be used to cheaply make full-cycle relays. A bit like a burst-fire SSR. I have used the latter, but they noticeably interfere with the lights on my inverter system. I'd be curious to know if you're right about the triac.

Its probably not worth it for such low quantities.

Yeah, as matti already said, for only one PCB a stencil is really expensive and there isn’t any time benefit using a stencil. I have used stencils several times, the results are sometimes better but the dispenser work makes more fun :)

It’s a year later; and stencils from the low-cost PCB houses have really come down in price. I’d give serious consideration to getting one now if I had anything with a bunch of small leads on it; and definitely get one if there was a BGA on the board.

The tape is made from Kapton, google it :)

@@Wilson84KS thanks.

@@technoideas5835 welcome.

The wire is ... a temperature feedback to controller...

Thermocouple for feedback, specifically.