The Makerbar, Hoboken’s Hackerspace, was in desperate need of a reflow oven. Hurricane Sandy did a number on a whole bunch of household appliances, so when [Kush] saw a neighbor throw out a broken toaster oven, the Makerbar crew sprung into action.
The storm waters shorted the electronics board, fried the existing controls, and basically turned the oven into a metal shell with heating elements. It was the perfect platform for a toaster oven – every part that was going to be thrown out was already destroyed.
[Zach] over at the Makerbar ordered the Sparkfun reflow toaster conversion kit along with a few arcade buttons and set to work. After plugging the heating elements into the mains power to make sure they still worked, [Zach] attached these elements to the relay on board the controller. Three arcade buttons were wired up to the controller, and a whole bunch of code was written.
With the included thermocouple, [Zach], [Kush], and the rest of the Makerbar gang now have a very accurate and reliable reflow oven. There’s also settings for Sculpey clay and shrinky dinks, just in case anyone at Makerbar is feeling a bit creative.
PASSIVE VOICE ALERT
otherwise, good hacking!
“It was the perfect platform for a toaster oven”
Weird how something originally intended to be a toaster oven can also be the perfect platform for a toaster over!
over->oven
I’m LAWLing to death over here
Haha, yea!
nice oven!
wow, $90 for that board!? bit steep?
I might suggest insulation or a heat shield between the buttons and the side of the oven? ;-)
Awesome power switch, love it.
I need something that can ramp up heat in a box (such as a dehydrator or convection oven) to 200F over 30 minutes, hold it there for several hours then turn off.