EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Crowd Funded Projects => Topic started by: hamster_nz on December 07, 2017, 08:14:41 pm
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Just saw this...
REFLO - The compact, open, and smart PCB reflow oven. Bake your dream!
https://www.crowdsupply.com/magicbox/reflo (https://www.crowdsupply.com/magicbox/reflo)
Apparently it is perfect for baking 50mm x 50mm boards, and is only 150mm x 150mm x 68mm.
Initially I though... "O.M.G. WHY? NO!", but now I thinking "Cute, fun, could make use of that, but too expensive for me".
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The design is stylish for sure, but I'm not sure this thing works as required. The heating element construction is a neat idea but it really increases the thermal mass a lot. This may not be an issue for heating up but it may prevent the oven from cooling down quickly enough. Here, the fan would be helpful but... what's that? The fan feeds into a tube with a diameter of roughly 1cm? And there is no air outlet, so where does the air go? Surely, the fan can't be sucking out the air... oh wait, it is! So they're feeding very hot air directly into the fan! That's not a design I'm confident in, especially since there's no clear air path to me. The air path may be pretty obstructed, reducing air flow.
In short: heating seems fine but cooling... not so sure. Maybe I'm worrying more about this than is warranted but since I can't test the oven in person, being critical is all I can do :)
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I like my gadgets as much as anyone, but this seems like an overpriced gimmick. How often do you need to take a reflow oven with you? Especially one limited to 50x50mm!
Good on them for getting 20 backers at that price :popcorn:
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The fan feeds into a tube with a diameter of roughly 1cm? And there is no air outlet, so where does the air go? Surely, the fan can't be sucking out the air... oh wait, it is! So they're feeding very hot air directly into the fan!
I didn't see any mention of the air direction in the specs or video, so I guess it could be either sucking or pushing the air out. I mean - the heating area is not hermetically enclosed so the fan could just push out the hot air in all the gaps just as well sucking in cold air thru them. Right?
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Does this thing even have a real control panal, or is it IOT wank operated only?
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So basically a single hollowed out refractory brick a heating element and some simple electronics. BOM costs about 10US$.
It is an interesting idea though and for about 50USD i would buy one, just to have a play with it.
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http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/smtoast.html (http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/smtoast.html)
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So basically a single hollowed out refractory brick a heating element and some simple electronics. BOM costs about 10US$.
It is an interesting idea though and for about 50USD i would buy one, just to have a play with it.
Maybe I'd try it for $50, but even then it seems like a flawed product. My main issue with it is the only interface is over bluetooth, I guess that works for some people but it just seems gimmicky to me.
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Im increasingly adding more and more elements to my workshop that have minimal 'panels' on them. Couple of machines only have an emergency stop, a heartbeat and ethernet link/act leds. Anythign else just ends up adding complexity and cost. Can run everything from a pc, or an ipad and its just fantastic.
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Why would you pay that much for something with such a stupidly small board size when a toaster oven works just fine?