Sometimes a soldering iron just isn’t the right tool for the job. After you learn to solder through-hole components, you’ll often find yourself soldering surface mount components. And although you can solder them by hand, a reflow oven or hotplate is much easier and more reliable. They can be big and expensive, but not this little hotplate from Adafruit. I know a few people who have this handy little hotplate, and it works great. It’s perfect for rework, preheating, or even reflowing solder paste. Just make sure your PCB is small because it’s only 30 mm × 30 mm.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
