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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.
Your motherboard has finished. Don't forget to ground it properly!
What isnt a toaster good for?
(I regretfully ask)
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
soldering in an unconventional way
sorry but industry has been doing the solderpaste->heated oven dance for years now.
it's unconventional to use a hand held iron unless you are doing board rework.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Mirror here. don't be surprised if all the images aren't on it yet...getting 900bytes/sec here folks.
First we had solid solder, cool. Then we had rosin-core solder for electronics, cooler. Then we had tabs of solder that could be melted with a lighter, lame. Now we have a toaster that can be used to solder, which is theoreticaly cool but realistically lame.
Wouldn't this paste have a higher resistance than the solder we know and love? Couln't a soldering iron be used to heat it with greater efficiency? Does it have any use outside of SMD?
Maybe I'm just weird, but I won't part with my soldering iron any time soon. SMD may be cool, but it doesn't have the "cobbled togethor" look of a traditionally etched and soldered circuit.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I'm thinking that's what makes this work.
I wonder if this could be adapted for mass production? Not having to individually solder pins would have to speed things up. The error rate is a little high for production, but I'm sure it could be improved with a little engineering.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Oh, yes, like anybody is under the illusion that the vast majority, or even a sizable minority, of modchips are used solely to play games written in languages that most American consumers don't even understand.
--sdem
And toaster ovens are so expensive these days.I wonder if Target has a 30 year financing option for these ultra expensive devices?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Read the "cooking" times mentioned on the page....the magic is in the solder paste that melts much more quickly than standard solder.... simply sticking a board into a toaster oven with normal solder definitely WOULD NOT work :)
--buddy
Well, soldering in hovens is by no means an unconventional way. Nowdays components are in BGA packages (ball grid arrays), which are matrices of solder balls under the package (see image). Those baybies can be soldered ONLY in an hoven. Same goes to the chipset of the motherboard of the computer you're using right now, unless it's a rather old one. So those guys apply the indutry standard to an amateur project. You can note that the things they solder could also be soldered with a soldering iron. Soldering a BGA that way can be more problematic, but that would kick ass! (usually BGA comes with multi-layer printed circuit board (PCB), so you wouldn't be able to go outside the professional circuit anyway).
Stop hanging out with pirates so you can appreciate the beauty of imports. Lots of games never make it over to the states, leaving little recourse but to import. One certainly doesn't need a translation for any Bemani game, or Fighting games, or even Sims for the most part. Plus there are tons of sites out on the web that provide translations for the more difficult parts.
I think you've allowed yourself to get caught up in the scene too much to even consider what people are doing with their stuff. I mean, why bother pirating a game when you can have a real copy in minutes with a trip down to your local store? And the real copy doesn't require any funky chips or discs to get working.
IMHO, Nintendo got this right with the GBA. The GBA has no region lock out, so there is basically no modchip industry for it. Granted there are still mods (The Afterburner is a nice kit that works great), but none of the "defeat lockout" variety. I don't know anybody who pirates GBA games (although I'm not really part of the Warez scene either).
I read the internet for the articles.
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!
--The more you know, the less you know.
Since installing the "accessory", I've bought maybe five or six import games from my local import game store. This import game store charges an arm and a leg for those rare games.
If not for my "accessory", I would be patronizing Software Etc. and similar chains.
I don't want to play Quake 2 on my Dreamcast; I want to play Guilty Gear X, or Shenmue II, or Capcom vs. SNK 2. To do that, you need to be a criminal.
Mom: Kids, dinner's ready! Kids: Oh boy mom! Whatcha got cookin in the oven? Mom: You're favorite... home made, roasted to perfection Intel chips (Pentiyumms?)
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
They can just put their site on slashdot, and let their overheated server sauter for them.
~ kjrose
Yes.. I can see the recipe.
Ingredients:
one graphic card
two memory stick
solder and paste to taste
1. little solder there
2. chip here and here.
3. a dash of flux there.
4. in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.
DING!
OH NOT! That was 350F, not Celcius!!!
Anyone want a byte of my overmelted Board?
I call it "GeForce FX", the FX stands for "Flambee Xtra".
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I have to confess I'm amazed to see someone use something as commonplace as a toaster oven to do the work of >$60,000 reflow ovens ;-) I'm an engineer in charge of a surface mount line, and there are a few interesting issues to consider when trying such techniques, the biggest of which is "ramp and soak" which in a nutshell is how hot a component gets over a given amount of time. When soldering SMT components, it is imperative that a component recieves no more than 2 degrees C (about 3 degrees F) a second ramp-up in temperature. This is to prevent thermal shock and damage to the components. It is OK for a component to be exposed to soldering temperatures, ideally for as little as possible; a few seconds. When you solder a component in an oven the way this article describes, you run a risk of damaging sensitive components. Passive components like SMT resistors, coils, and simple IC's like logic gates generally take the punishment a lot better than film capacitors, PROM's, etc. Of course, just for foolin' around in the garage, the toaster oven method should be ok, likely you'll not fry the component if you don't leave it in there longer than you have to.
;-)
SMT reflow ovens, essentially, are identical to the ovens used in Pizza Hut where they stick a pizza in one end and it is taken through heating zones via a conveyor and pops out the other side done. In SMT reflow, the zones are controlled in such a manner that the holy 2 degrees C rule is never broken. (I used to joke that on the day I get fired, I was going to stick a frozen pizza in our reflow oven just to see what'd happen.)
My method of soldering IC's to a board is simple and IPC approved: Place the IC on the pads; center it up as well as you can. Using a regular soldering iron, "tack" two opposing corners of the IC to the lands with conventional solder. Don't worry about bridging. Then, apply a small amount of liquid solder flux to one side of the IC, bathing the legs. Then, apply a small bead of solder to the end of you iron and GENTLY wipe this bead across all the legs, from pin one to pin whatever. (Yes, it's counter-intuitative,) and you'll see as if by magic that you'll get very few solder bridges. Apply more flux if required. Clean tip of iron completely of solder, and just touch it to solder bridges. The excess solder will "sweat" to the iron. Clean iron tip again and repeat. When done, clean flux with laquer thinner or similar substance. (If you use no-clean flux, you could just be gross and leave it there if you wished, removing excess with a paper towel.) I find that a simple toothbrush dipped in thinner does wonders.
Or, you can stick stuff in your wife's toaster and take chances that way
Take care now ~!
debunkmyth()
{
flamesuiton = true;
Yes, nobody would ever use a mod chip for anything but piracy. The big homebrew ps2 scene is just a myth, right?
I can't beleive I'm feeding an obvious troll here, but some of us are big into application development for the ps2 and that requires a mod chip. God forbid anyone program for a peice of hardware the own.
}
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
http://www.johnytech.com/sdm/oven_art.html
I Encrypt My IM's
As other posters have indicated, reflowing solder paste in a toaster oven has been done for years and simulates the standard process for SMT assembly.
Using Solder Paste, you can use a hot air gun to place components on a PCB as well. A woman I know at work (Celestica) made a video demonstrating the SMT solder process using a hot air gun - it came out quite nicely and her joke on customers was saying that she followed the board through the oven (it was vapor phase at the time). Many customers were impressed with her tolerance to extreme heat.
As somebody noted, most components will stop working at 140C and in the oven they will go over 200C - they will survive, but the PCB should not be powered up until the PCB has cooled to room temperature.
If you're going to try this at home, a few comments:
1. Solder paste will only stay reliably sticky for 30 minutes. Make sure that you have your components ready and the oven at the primary temperature before you break the seals on the syringe and start applying paste. Make sure that you don't have more components than you can place in 20 minutes.
2. Solder "paste" is made up of finely ground solder held together by flux. Both the solder and the flux are poisenous and during the solder process you will see a build up of flux on the inside of the oven. Along with this, the solder may form "balls" that can be thrown off the PCB. An oven used for SMT experiments cannot be used for food preparation afterwards.
3. Solder paste must be capped and refridgerated when not in use. If you are storing it in a fridge where food is stored, make sure that it is in something like a tupperwear container and well marked (especially if children are around). It looks like pate or liverwurst, but will sit in your stomach like a ball of lead (sorry, couldn't resist).
4. The PCB coming out of the oven is very hot and will take several minutes to cool down. I've heard of a number of people that have built SMT boards in a toaster oven, only to forget oven mitts and tongs to handle the hot PCBs and ended up dropping the PCB on the floor and burning themselves. One genius I heard about was sitting down when he pulled the board out of the oven without any mitts or tongs... Make sure you have something like a barbeque grill ready for the PCB to sit on when it comes out of the over.
5. The PCB should be as dry as possible. Before putting on paste/components, you might want to put it into the over for a day or so at the lowest setting to try and bake out any water that has gotten trapped in it. Let the PCB cool before applying paste.
6. The PCB pads should be "HASL" ("Hot Air Solder Leveled") for best results (do not try this on bare copper and you may have to experiment with gold finishes).
7. I would suggest using parts with leads on 0.050" (50 mil) centers, 0805 chip components and SOT-23 transistor and diodes. Anything smaller will make applying the solder very difficult. The article indicates the author used smaller spacing components, but not how many and how the PCB was laid out.
8. Do not use surface mount connectors. Unless you are very comfortable with doing your own soldering, you will find that it is difficult to get a uniformly strong joint on every pin.
9. If you are designing your own PCB, you can use Protel's "EasyTrax", which is an MS-DOS Command Line program that can be downloaded for free from a variety of sources (you should be able to find where on Google). I have added IPC standard pad layouts for the library components.
I've done it a couple of times with an old toaster oven and it works surprisingly well. Just make sure you plan out what you are going to do and if there are any terms that I have used above that you are unfamilia with, make sure that you investigate them before trying it out on your own.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Yes it would be cool to get watts worth of heat from a milliwatt source.
No more fumbling with hot-metal iron pens. Shutter the light and it's cold!
That's true! When your eyes quit steaming, you'll quickly tire of soldering things by sense of touch and smell.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
You've got two things going for you when you burn paper with a magnifying glass that you don't have while heating a chip lead. Paper combusts spontaniously, and paper is a poor conductor of heat compared to copper, tin, and lead. This means that you can heat a tiny spot on a piece of paper to over 400F more easily than a spot of copper because the energy you're putting into the paper isn't being carried away so fast, and that you only have to set a tiny spot of paper on fire for the whole sheet to burn. My guess would be that your magnifying glass wouldn't be able to heat a chip lead up that much because the heat would get carried elsewhere almost as quickly as you were putting it in, and even if it didn't, you'd have to pump a lot more heat into the chip lead since it's got to be completely heated to get the job done instead of having just a tiny spot heated.
I was pretty disappointed. There were tons of solder bridges (where the solder connects two pins together), some pins that didn't stick reliably, etc. I wound up spending as much effor cleaning up as I would have doing it by hand in the first place. If I was going to try it again, I might make a solder mask to apply the paste only on the pads, instead of running a thin line across the pads as they recommended.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
i hope that toasters used in this manner get retired from toasting food products.
but some of us are big into application development for the ps2 and that requires a mod chip.
It requires either an independently produced mod chip, or the official PS2 mod chip produced by Sony.
Will I retire or break 10K?
also works well for reflow of components. For rework purposes, use aluminium muffler tape to screen off the rest of the area around the component you are heating up. My recipe to remove a large chip: 1 minute at 2 inches to preheat 1 minute at 1/2 inch to reflow Flip chip off with an ice pick
THAT SAID, WHAT IS IT ABOUT SOLDERING THAT STRIKES FEAR INTO PEOPLE???
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.
This technique isn't a substitute for learning to use a soldering iron. It's just not. "Maybe if I do this complicated, tricky thing with a toaster oven, I won't have to use (shudder) a soldering iron!!!"
Just to get things straight here, a few things I've had to explain to people in the last year or so:
Reflow with a toaster oven will not substitute for learning to solder.
Conductive epoxy will not substitute for learning to solder. (it's for making connections to things you can't solder, and is more difficult to work with than solder)
"Solderless breadboards" will not substitute for learning to solder.
Buying lots of alligator clip jumpers is no substitute for learning to solder, either.
Conductive pens will not substitute for making circuit boards
Am I leaving anything out?
This how they do it in industry, so there is no real magic here. Solder reflow of SMD / SMT is the way it's done.
If a toaster oven isn't good enough, get a larger one. http://www.atco-us.com/oven.html
Don't forget that doing this in a toaster oven will potentially contaminate the oven with lead. Think twice about using the oven for toast after this. Traditional solder and solder paste is Lead (Pb) and Tin (Sn) based. If it is not good on your walls, it probably isn't good in your toast.
...they've also figured out a way to make toast with a soldering iron.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Yeah but where's the CHALLENGE? That just takes all the fun out of garage tinkering, trying to solder components onto perfboards without burning up a) the components and b) your fingers.
SMD may be the future, but it's for weenies...
This technique is only really suitable for special case surface mount soldering.
If you're not using surface mount components (like mod chips) you're going to have to use a soldering iron anyway.
The key to making any iron work easy (even surface mount!) is to use plenty of flux.
Get a seperate container of just flux and don't be afraid to use it. It makes a WORLD of difference.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.