Improvements to the DIY PID-Controlled Soldering Hotplate
January 27th, 2009 by Jeff
Last week I posted about the DIY PID-Controlled Soldering Hotplate I designed and built to improve my surface mount soldering capabilities.
I mentioned one issue I was having with the hotplate on flickr. Specifically, the aluminum baseplate was getting too hot for comfort (literally) when I set the hotplate to solder reflow temperatures (180-220C) for more than a few minutes. At the time I thought it was due to radiant heat from the upper aluminum block transferring to the bottom plate. I later discovered that the ceramic spacers I used to hold up the hotplate were much more thermally conductive than I thought and the screws I used to attach the baseplate to the spacers were burning hot before the rest of the baseplate. It was conducted heat, not radiant, that was the primary cause of the problem!
McMaster-Carr to the rescue!
I was able to resolve the issue by reducing the diameter of the ceramic spacers from 1/2″ to 1/4″ and using all stainless hardware to attach the spacers. Now the baseplate stays relatively cool even with the hotplate at high temperatures for long periods of time.
Click on the pictures below or view the complete set on flickr.
Related posts:
- Keith’s Hotplate and PID Controller Teardown Pics
- DIY Digital Thermostat-controlled Space Heater
- Improvements to my microscope setup for SMT work
- Tony’s Diamond Chop Saw (Part 2)
Tags: DIY, Electronics, hotplate, McMaster-Carr, pid, soldering, surface mount
To the person making the hot plate controller. I have a fully funktional temperature controller using a love control which was made just for this type of applications and there has never been a problem of overheating. It could be kept on all day with or without a load on the heater block itself and would never over heat. I can take some pictures of the inside wireing if you would like. Nice job on the heater block by the way. Plastic teflon is a very good heat insulator and can handle very high temps.