Hi Ap,

When last I looked, I couldn't find a benchtop reflow oven for anywhere near under a thousand dollars. Instead I went with a PID controller which, in conjunction with my computer, turns a toaster oven into a benchtop reflow oven.

Yes, you really can use a toaster oven for reflowing smt boards, with the following caveat. Not just any toaster oven will suffice.

You must use an oven that will heat up quickly enough to achieve the necessary thermal ramp rate. This is most critical in transitioning from the dwell stage to the reflow stage of the thermal profile. Once the active flux has cleaned the surfaces you need the solder to melt before all the active flux evaporates. Otherwise new oxides will form and you will not get good solder joints. Good whetting will occur if and only if the still active flux is displaced by the heavier melted solder. There are other factors governing the necessary thermal profile, but the salient point here is that the oven must be able to heat up fast enough. As long as it can, neither the board, the components nor the solder paste care how the heat is generated.

The only oven I found that could heat up fast enough is the Black and Decker Infrawave. That's not to say that no other will, just that I never found any. Of course, once I found the one I stopped looking.

In any case, I then bought a PID controller from Silicon Horizon (www.TheSiliconHorizon.com) on eBay. I had to provide a power cord, a recepticle, an SSR (solid state relay) a USB cable, a thermocouple and a box to put it all in. Still, I was able to set up a nice benchtop reflow oven for about $200, far less that the 4-digit prices I could buy one for. For that reason alone, cost efficacy, I simply could not justify buying a manufactured benchtop reflow oven. Even if I had to buy heating elements and build the oven from scratch I could do it for much less.

Good luck,

Joe