You may remember the Sparkfun article a few years ago when they experimented in using a skillet to reflow solder on SMD parts. Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries has made a new version of the skillet that has an Arduino for a brain and can process boards with timed heating stages.
"We use the Arduino controlled robot skillet to surface mount a chip on the USB Boarduino"
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The whole point of using electric fry pan instead of professional reflow tool is cheap pries so diy builder can start using smd. How many of you have laser cutter at home ? totally useless diy unfriendly video, the whole thing can be made easier and better
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I can solder chips of that size and much smaller by hand, there’s no real point to this project.
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@ therian: if you’re unable to grasp that a laser cutter is entirely noncritical and unnecessary to complete this project, we really have to question your expertise in assessing just how much easier and better this diy device could be made.
@ kiwi_frog: thanks for letting us know about your L337 soldering skillz, I know I’ll sleep better at night now. Yes, it can be done by hand. One might imagine, since this is part of how she makes a living, that soldering dozens if not hundreds of smd’s by hand could become a bit taxing in no time at all. Just perhaps, maybe someone else out there who is looking at scaling at-home fabbing of their own custom board kits can make use of this. Imagine that, each person’s needs are their own…
/end of grumpy
This is a nice project, a nifty piece of work. The inclusion of ramping profiles into the design is a good touch, definitely helps to bring the high-tech a little closer to home.
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my point was that video was not about the project but more about how laser can cut plastic…
There is no need for mechanical parts at all, PWM will do the job
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Wow. That’s really clever. Ha ha. I loved the video.
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On my laser cutter…
Everyone has one these days! What happened to regular DIY? Has it moved on…?
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@John: My point was (although not clear) it takes around 10- 20 seconds to hand solder a ic of that size. Her method was quite a lot longer than that.
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One can have parts cut out for him/her by a few online services for very little money. Also for most of us hand soldering smd’s sucks big **** and is in no way pleasant. I have several old electric skillets lying around might have to give this a try.
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