Chinese PCB Hot Plate

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Been designing quite a few PCB's while staying at the Shenzhen Steamhead Maker Space. One bug bear is the lack of a PCB Reflow oven or a hot air gun. This was fixed by purchasing a small 400W Chinese PCB Hot Plate. This cost RMB170, or about A$36 and was donated to Steamhead.

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While it does take 15minutes or so to get to 220 deg C, once there, a PCB will reflow in about 30 seconds or so and depending on the components can be reflowed a few times if needed.

While I have a home built reflow oven and controller, it does take up space. One of the above hot plates takes up a very small space and is very simple to use. It also allows one to move/remove components easily. I might look at shipping one of these via AliExpress when I am back. My bags are way too full to be able to fit one of these in for the trip back to Oz

Bumped into a German guy yesterday at the markets and was going to purchase a simple hot air gun and it turns out he has a spare one here in SZ, so he has donated it to Steamhead as well. We now have some handy soldering equipment here in the Maker Space.