[sdiy] SMT in a toaster oven

[mark verbos]

I don't know why this message doesn't show up, sorry if you get it 4  
times.




I just tried using a small convection toaster oven to reflow some SMT  
parts.

Woah! It work perfectly.

This circuit board is about 6" x 8" and FILLED with discrete parts.  
Soldering it by hand takes me about 20 hours of labor and looks like  
shit. I stenciled solder paste on it and placed all the parts by hand  
in about an hour and a half, reflowed it in 90 seconds. It looks like  
a machine did it. It's amazing. $60 black and decker toaster oven,  
$100 stencil and $18 solder paste. I got the stencil done by advanced  
circuits along with my $33 each PCB, but you can get them cheaper from  
some other places. I used about 10% of that solder paste. I think I'll  
buy a bigger container now that I know it works.

Do all of you SMT guys do this?

Mark