T-962 Infrared IC heater / Reflow oven for sale

I’ve been getting stainless steel stencils from ITEAD Studio for $45, they come in a solid frame.
http://imall.iteadstudio.com/open-pcb/smd-stencil.html

I bought a printing machine to hold the frame off AliExpress for $85 http://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/224446401.html

It is a very solid machine, came well packed, delivery was fast and only $73.

If you need a bunch of tiny boards, PCB Pool may be cheaper, because they charge per square inch. It looks like DFRobot will only route 10 boards for that price.

It’s tough to compare vendors, because everyone does stuff differently. DFRobot is cheap, but their manufacturing specs are limited: 6mil min trace/width, and 12mil min hole size. They don’t do six layer boards, either. No gold plating. No tinted vias (last time I checked). No free stencil. Considering stainless steel solder stencils are typically fairly expensive, if I’m doing a prototype run (like, 10 units), PCB-Pool works out to be the best deal I think. For larger orders, it makes sense to go somewhere else for the PCB.

Solder stencils are worth their weight in gold. I have an air compressor dispenser collecting dust – it’s just so much faster to use a stencil. And for some parts (fine-pitch BGA), I wouldn’t want to mess around with hand-pasting pads.

Got the oven today. Packed great and looks like new. Thanks, JDAL!

Definitely found that room temperature paste was far easier to work with… meaning I only pulled out 1/3 of my hair. Had best luck with the syringe… paste either wanted to come off the toothpicks in large blobs, or not at all.

Oven did it’s job just fine. Sorta discolored the white silkscreen in some parts.

As far as today’s experience goes, I think I probably could have done it faster by hand… and I still need to get under a scope and get the bridges off the TSSOP parts.

Buuuuuut I guess it will be easier next time, and I’m sure using a stencil properly would make it cake.