Building a reflow oven for Level One manufacturing
But in the world of electronics, often you end up with multiple boards for really cheap or you want to make a few dozen of one board for your own use. Assembling things and soldering components is a pain at that scale, especially if you want to use the more compact surface mounted components, and especially if those surface mount components are really teeny.
Enter making a solder paste reflow oven out of an old toaster oven.
The range of creations out there that anyone can design and build is wonderful. (can I interest you in #badgelife?)
I … picked up a controller from a great guy, who, by the way, went thru the three layers of manufacturing in the past seven or so years.
I ripped out the guts of the toaster, rewired it to be directed by the controller, and ran a test run.
Two things are constant in the maker world.
One is, why buy it when you can make it for more?
Two is, often it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. In the process of doing, you learn, you share, you discover new things that open new doors.
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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.
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