Warning: I switched from hot air rework to a $99 preheater plate

Been using hot air stations for board work for about 8 years now. But over in Phoenix last month, a guy at the shop showed me his cheap little preheater plate and I laughed at it at first. Well, I borrowed it for a stubborn laptop board and man, that bottom heat made the difference - popped the chip right off without lifting any pads. Anyone else made the switch and not looked back?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_wren14d ago

Did you run into any issues with the cheap plate heating unevenly? I tried a budget one a while back and the thing had a hot spot right in the middle that would cook smaller boards before the edges even got warm. Had to rotate the board every minute which kind of defeated the purpose.

noah_rivera5714d ago

The hot spot thing is real for sure but I feel like people make it out to be a bigger deal than it is most of the time... you can work around it if you just keep an eye on your board and flip it around a bit. @the_wren mentioned they had to rotate every minute which sounds like the plate was pretty bad though, not gonna lie. Honestly for general use like melting wax or just warming a small batch of flux it's fine, nobody is doing precision reflow with a $20 hotplate anyway. Just depends on what you're trying to do, if you're doing serious SMD work then yeah maybe budget gear is a bad idea. But for basic stuff I still think it's okay as long as you know what you're getting into.