well im a university student . i have to figure out an instrumentation project and then a power electronics project along with control project.In the end i want these three projects to emerge in a single mega project ,therefore i want u people to give me some ideas on it .project might be lenthy but should be an application based project thanks

 

I've been thinking about using a toaster oven to make a temperature profiling IR soldering station. Check out PCBExpress.com they sell kits so you can use a standard toaster oven to IR solder your surface mount electronics - I've tried it and it works quite well.

Using a standard toaster oven you can make a much more advanced soldering device. Themocouples read the temperature of the board (the instrumentaion part of your project). You need power electronics to control the heating elements. If you put the two together you have a temperature controled IR soldering device. Profesional IR soldering devices allow you to ramp up temperature on a specific curve to minimise stress on the components. Implementing this type of system with a microcontroller would make a neat project.

Brent