T962 T962A Reflow Oven Review

The T962 is a budget small IR Reflow oven used for surface mount PCB assembly

I've seen a bit of noise about these online re whether thay are usable, dependable and consistent

YES THEY ARE. In fact, there is no other alternative at this price point.

However I couldn't find a review and it would've been nice to find one before risking my $$, so here's my take on the unit or anyone else in the same position:

For reference prior to the T962 I tried 1 large frying pan, 2 desktop ovens combined with the sparkfun reflow temperature controller

Neither solution ramped the heat up fast enough and I was manually opening the oven doors to get the cool down required

I need a set and forget solution...


Back to the T962

(Don't use them inside, use them in a  garage or similar as they do burn off paint & of course, smelly, and most likely highly toxic solderflux gases)

Leaded solder:

I used mine initially for leaded solder and no problems.  Too long ago now to remember which profile I settled on but it was straight forward and easy.

Lead free:

Then I went lead free and had very frustrating issues with not enough temperature.  I programmed my own profile to add more heat (initially with ramping & temps per the SAC305/WS488 manufacturers profile) but all I ended up doing was cooking parts

In the end it was very simple

1. Always put your target PCB's on top of 2 layers of old PCB's to prevent the PCB drawers metal bottom from sinking the heat away from your PCB's

2. There are 2 elements in the unit, mark the position of these on the bottom of the PCB drawer. Align your PCB's longitudily with these elements, ie as much in line and centered between them as possible

3. Don't be greedy, if you wanna do 10 PCB's at a time, go buy a better ($$$) oven

Following the above I have great and consistent results with inbuilt Profile 4 (Has lower temps than Profile 3) for Lead free SAC305/WS488

Update 20111201: I'm currently using SAC305/NC257-2 and am having just as good results with Profile 4

 

But I am curious to see what anyone thinks of the new AOYUE HHL3000.. of course, its about 3x the price of a T962