Reflow stations

[Eclipsed]

Has any one heard of/had any experience with these Atten reflow stations? They're pretty much a Hakko knock-off and they're cheap.I know you get what you pay for, but I'd only use it occasionally, so I can't justify spending $1000 on a high quality station.Thanks for any input.

https://www.globalsources.com/si/60...g/product_id-1000460746/action-GetProduct.htm

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[pittuck]

**broken link removed**

these may be of help sparkfun is a great place, sell pretty wire variety of stuff.

 

[bmcculla]

I have the digital hot air station from Sparkfun and it works nicely. I haven't done anything too complicated but it's easy to use and really cheap - it reflows .5mm pitch components and 603 components nicely.

 

[Eclipsed]

I have the digital hot air station from Sparkfun and it works nicely. I haven't done anything too complicated but it's easy to use and really cheap - it reflows .5mm pitch components and 603 components nicely.

Does the quality of the unit itself seem pretty decent?

 

[Oznog]

I do some work with a dial-controlled heat gun along with a butane Weller Portasol with a tiny hot air blower (not the blow torch) attachment. It does well, the hot air gun preheats the board and flows the smd paste's flux and the Portasol has a finer point to flow the solder in the paste. The heat gun can also flow it, but it will melt anything plastic nearby.

It's a bit touchy for rework. I can do pkgs with dual rows of smd pins, but I'm pretty sure I would have enormous difficulty doing rework on a pkg with pins on all 4 sides unless I blew heat over the whole thing with the gun.

 

[bmcculla]

The unit is well put together. It does have some things about it that arn't great: The strangest is that the temperature setpoint dial doesn't have temperature markings so you have to wait for the machine to reach the setpoint before you can tell what temperature you have set. It does heat and cool quite quickly though - it heats up to the setpoint in less than 10 seconds and cools down only a bit slower.

 

[Eclipsed]

I bought the 850D off EBAY. WOW, quality was much better than I expected, and it seems to work perfect.Got a large assortment of nozzles for the price of a single Hakko nozzle as well.

bmcculla- if you have the 850D(with temp display), you just hold down the red button while you adjust the temp, which will display desired setpoint temp. Actual temp is shown when button is released