![](https://wordpress-1016567-4521551.cloudwaysapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/internal-heating-element-makes-these-pcbs-self-soldering.png)
Surface mount components have been a game changer for the electronics hobbyist, but doing reflow soldering right requires some way to evenly heat the board. You might need to buy a commercial reflow oven — you can cobble one together from an old toaster oven, after all — but you still need something, because it’s not like a PCB is going to solder itself. Right?
Wrong. At least if you’re [Carl Bugeja], who came up with a clever way to make his PCBs self-soldering. The idea is to use one of the internal layers on a four-layer PCB, which would normally be devoted to a ground plane, as a built-in heating element. Rather than a broad, continuous layer of copper, [Carl] made a long, twisting trace covering the entire area of the PCB. Routing the trace around vias was a bit tricky, but in the end he managed a single trace with a resistance of about 3 ohms.
When connected to a bench power supply, the PCB actually heats up quickly and pretty evenly judging by the IR camera. The quality of the soldering seems very similar to what you’d see from a reflow oven. After soldering, the now-useless heating element is converted into a ground plane for the circuit by breaking off the terminals and soldering on a couple of zero ohm resistors to short the coil to ground.
The whole thing is pretty clever, but there’s more to the story. The circuit [Carl] chose for his first self-soldering board is actually a reflow controller. So once the first board was manually reflowed with a bench supply, it was used to control the reflow process for the rest of the boards in the batch, or any board with a built-in heating element. We expect there will be some limitations on the size of the self-soldering board, though.
We really like this idea, and we’re looking forward to seeing more from [Carl] on this.
Thanks for the tip, [Tobias].
- SEO Powered Content & PR Distribution. Get Amplified Today.
- Platoblockchain. Web3 Metaverse Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. Access Here.
- Source: https://hackaday.com/2023/01/18/internal-heating-element-makes-these-pcbs-self-soldering/
- 39
- a
- About
- actually
- After
- All
- and
- AREA
- around
- because
- Bit
- board
- Breaking
- broad
- built-in
- buy
- camera
- Changer
- chose
- coil
- commercial
- components
- connected
- content
- continuous
- control
- controller
- converted
- Copper
- Couple
- covering
- doing
- Electronics
- embedded
- Entire
- expect
- First
- Forward
- from
- game
- game-changer
- going
- Ground
- HTTPS
- idea
- in
- internal
- IT
- itself
- layer
- layers
- limitations
- Long
- looking
- made
- make
- MAKES
- managed
- manually
- might
- more
- MOUNT
- Need
- normally
- OHM
- Old
- ONE
- PCBs
- plato
- Plato Data Intelligence
- PlatoData
- power
- Power Supply
- pretty
- process
- quality
- quickly
- requires
- Resistance
- REST
- seeing
- seems
- Short
- similar
- single
- Size
- So
- some
- Still
- Story
- supply
- The
- thing
- tip
- to
- together
- trace
- true
- use
- What
- which
- WHO
- will
- would
- youtube
- zephyrnet
- zero