So I added the thermocouple inside the iron to read the temperature of the hotplate. Well, with my previous setup I had a couple of issues, like I couldn’t know the temperature of the iron and I pretty much had to rely on the built in thermostat which isn’t that accurate. A MAX6675 module with K type thermocouple to read the temperature.A 5v power supply for the arduino – I am using this SMPS type because it’s easier to connect wires in the screw terminals.A display – I am using a touch shield for arduino which gives it a nice looking interface.An arduino or any other microcontroller.A dry iron – I am using this 600w iron I have in my house but you can use any old electric iron.Lets see which are the components we need, Then we put the PCB in the hotplate which showly heated up the PCB from the bottom upto a point when the solder paste melts and joins the component to the PCB. We apply solder paste on the PCB pads and put the component on it. but it gets really challenging sometimes when it comes to solder SMD parts because they are so tiny so hand soldering them is a bit difficult. You see most of us generally use soldering iron to solder electronics components on a PCB. Now what reflow soldering actually does and why do we need it in the first place? My goal is to basically modify a normal iron and add temperature control to it so that it acts as a reflow hotplate. But suddenly it stopped working and then I decided to upgrade it. Over the recent years I have been using a regular clothing Iron, without any modification as a hotplate to solder SMT components and it used to work great.
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