If you happen to’re working with floor mount elements, you’re seemingly going to desire a reflow plate in some unspecified time in the future. [Vitaly] was in want of simply such a instrument, and thus whipped up a compact reflow plate that’s conveniently powered by way of USB-C.
This reflow rig is designed for smaller work, with a working space of 80 mm x 70 mm. There are two choices for the heating component—both a metallic core PCB-based heater, or a metallic ceramic heater. The previous is nice for working with Sn42Bi58 solder paste at 138 C, in response to [Vitaly], whereas the latter will fortunately deal with Sn63Pb37 at 183 C if the soiled stuff is extra your jam.
Working the present is an ESP32-C3-WROOM, which serves up a web-based management panel over Bluetooth for setting the heating profiles. Utilizing Bluetooth over WiFi may look like an odd selection at first, but it surely means you don’t have so as to add the recent plate to the native wi-fi community to entry it, useful in the event you’re on the transfer. It’s additionally price noting you can’t run this off any previous USB charger—you’ll want one appropriate with USB Energy Supply (PD) that may ship no less than 100 watts.
If you happen to’re needing to whip up small boards with regularity, a hotplate like this one can actually turn out to be useful. Information are on GitHub for these keen to construct their very own.
This isn’t the primary time we’ve seen USB-C powering a small reflow plate. After all, in the event you make your PCBs self heating, you may sidestep all that totally.
