Soldering with a Toaster Oven

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.

Comments

alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen?

[Tekmage]

Why burn ants when you can put that magnifying glass to good use soldering circuits together in the summer sun? ;-)

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!

Re:what do you mean unconventional?

[frohike]

Yes, I agree. When I first came to my current day job back in about '98, they had a little toaster oven they used for the completion of SMT boards. I think now they just send the boards out to be produced and populated elsewhere (it's cheaper that way once you reach a certain point) but they were most definitely doing it for a long while before that.

How do you guys think Ball Grid Array packages are mounted on a board? :) These are the chips (like embedded PPC) that just have a big matrix of solder balls on the bottom which are soldered to the 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.