Reflow oven T100C

[hans chr]

Hi,

I have an oven (chinese) T962-A. That is totally rubish! I even made my own PID. Got perfect track of curve, but no air circulation makes the temperature controlled just on a single spot! Convection is a necesity! So... I was thinking of an oven sold at Manncorp, and at http://www.tonzh.com/en/. It is the T200C / T100C. This has convection and seems like a good choice. But I would like to be certain! Anyone know of this oven? Is it any good?

Redgards

HC

[blogger]

I'm sorry to hear T962 doesn't work for you.
I've done high-density SMT (BGA, tssop, 0402, 0.4mm pitch TQFP etc) in it without any problems.
for $200 you gotta admit its a great deal.

[hans chr]

Do you use lead free paste?

[blogger]

Ah, no, strictly non-ROHS here sorry.

[sirket]

I've never entirely understood why building a decent reflow oven is so hard.

What are the features people are looking for in an oven? What size? What price point?

[gsattler]

Hans Chr, did you get a price on the T200N from Beijing Torch? The Manncorp version is selling for $4500.

[adafruit]

i just want a $1k-$2k 'toaster oven' that can do 8"x8" (give or take) that has no spots that get 10C hotter than others.
im looking at the Elektor oven https://www.elektor.com/projects/smt-ov ... 80/smtoven but US is 120V and this is 220V and usually thats hard to fix with a heating element.

[hans chr]

Hi,

I got quote of "t200c+" =ca. 2000 usd.

+ = temp profile stuff and t200c oven. Nice if someone else could ask for quote and see if it is possible to get lower price!

they claim +-2 deg C in oven. I would stay away from all ovens with no convection. Often you see good results of china/elector, because people use very small pcb placed in the middle of oven and non rohs. The regulation is very poor at the corners. And, direct heat from IR is no good. The pcb-surface temp is totally different from air-temp.

Would really like to see some studies of the Tx00 ovens from torch...

[gsattler]

We have two ovens here at work. 1) An OK Industries JEM-310 convection reflow oven with nitrogen abilities. This was our standby for years and worked pretty well after extensive fiddling to figure out temperature profiles for a given board. It took forever to heat up, was huge, ran on 220V power and used lots of nitrogen (at $250 per tank with delivery!). The oven had problems evenly heating large boards, so we bought: 2) a T-962A which is a chinese manufacture IR reflow oven off eBay (this is the same oven Elektor sells). We have had spotty luck with that oven and have problems doing BGA reflow with hotspots developing on places across the board.

The long and the short of it is that we decided that we need an IR and convection current oven with nitrogen abilities. This avoids pad oxidation problems during reflow since we have thru-hole parts to mount after doing the BGA/QFP/resistor network mounting, and hopefully will yield even heating with the dual heat methods. ROHS+BGA+large board is a tough situation to evenly heat. The Torch T200N looks like it could be a good solution, particularly for $2000USD. I emailed them this morning to get a quote for the T200N shipped to Houston, Texas and will let you guys know what it came to when I get it.

[sirket]

i just want a $1k-$2k 'toaster oven' that can do 8"x8" (give or take) that has no spots that get 10C hotter than others.
im looking at the Elektor oven https://www.elektor.com/projects/smt-ov ... 80/smtoven but US is 120V and this is 220V and usually thats hard to fix with a heating element.

220/240 is available everywhere in the US- even NYC

All household (and a lot of office) power is delivered on two 110 volt legs each 180 degrees out of phase with the other. Either phase to ground gives you 110v. Connecting across one phase to the other gives you 220v. In your electrical box- every other breaker on a side is connected to the same leg. So on the left side- breakers 1,3,5, and 7 are connected to the first leg, and breakers 2,4,6 and 8 are connected to the other leg. The same is true for the right side. To get 220v you use a double wide breaker that connects to both legs. You could easily make this change yourself but it's probably not legal in a commercial space. An electrician could give you a 220v/240v outlet in a few minutes.

Whether you have 208v or 240v depends on how the power is brought in. In some larger buildings power is brought in as 3 phase and you get two legs. Unfortunately the two legs aren't 180 degrees out of phase (they're 120 degrees out) so you end up with 208v (sin 120 * 240) instead of 240v. Either way it generally works just fine.

[adafruit]

we've wired up power before. but now we're in a rental loft and we think it will be difficult to arrange this...so we'd like to avoid it

[gsattler]

You could use a step-up transformer or a variac. Heftily load rated of course.

[adafruit]

We have two ovens here at work. 1) An OK Industries JEM-310 convection reflow oven with nitrogen abilities. This was our standby for years and worked pretty well after extensive fiddling to figure out temperature profiles for a given board. It took forever to heat up, was huge, ran on 220V power and used lots of nitrogen (at $250 per tank with delivery!). The oven had problems evenly heating large boards, so we bought: 2) a T-962A which is a chinese manufacture IR reflow oven off eBay (this is the same oven Elektor sells). We have had spotty luck with that oven and have problems doing BGA reflow with hotspots developing on places across the board.

The long and the short of it is that we decided that we need an IR and convection current oven with nitrogen abilities. This avoids pad oxidation problems during reflow since we have thru-hole parts to mount after doing the BGA/QFP/resistor network mounting, and hopefully will yield even heating with the dual heat methods. ROHS+BGA+large board is a tough situation to evenly heat. The Torch T200N looks like it could be a good solution, particularly for $2000USD. I emailed them this morning to get a quote for the T200N shipped to Houston, Texas and will let you guys know what it came to when I get it.

Thanks for the great info. I'm not concerned with BGA so much. If we can do RoHS leaded parts that will take care of 90% of our boards. we're unlikely to get nitrogen tho. Sparkfun got a 2000A http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutori ... ials_id=59 which they say sucked. Not sure precisely who makes it tho.
Anyways, let us know how it goes...

[adafruit]

You could use a step-up transformer or a variac. Heftily load rated of course.

we could - in fact we used to have one. thing is, if im going to get an oven and/or deal with 220 it better be the Right Oven, yknow?

[sirket]

we've wired up power before. but now we're in a rental loft and we think it will be difficult to arrange this...so we'd like to avoid it

Whatever works for your situation

Obviously I don't know anything about your loft but I can't imagine installing a 220v outlet would be all that difficult. The 220 is already there in your electrical panel- you just need to run a wire to wherever you want the outlet and have a couple of spare breaker slots. Probably wouldn't take but an hour to do everything. The building itself should have an electrician that they use who could do it pretty quickly. If you don't have any spare breaker slots, or the panel is on the other side of the building- then yeah- it can be somewhat difficult.

I don't think a step up transformer is going to help. The problem is power not voltage. 110v @15amp just isn't a lot of power- about 1600 watts if you push the circuit to limit. More realistically you max out at about 1500 watts- about the same as a large toaster. I'm not sure you can control the heat and deliver it effectively with only 1500 watts to play with. You could go to a larger 20 or preferably 30amp 110v outlet- but then you need to rewire and you might as well just go 220v.