Halogen lamp

2 Articles

Car Lights For Reflow Heat Source

December 12, 2017 by 26 Comments

If you only have a car and you need to unsolder some tricky surface mount components: what would you do? If you’re Kasyan TV, you’d remove your car’s halogen lights and get to town. That’s right: car lights for reflow.

When the friend of the host of Kasyan TV needed to remove some roasted toasted FETs from his motherboard but didn’t have anything for reflowing, she took some headlights and used them as an infrared source to desolder the FETs. Powered by a lab supply (although car batteries work too), the process works with 60 and 100-watt bulbs.

Now, reflowing with halogen bulbs isn’t new, and we’ve seen it done with the run of the mill 100-watt bulbs and a halogen floodlight. However, what we really like about using car lights is that they’re available everywhere and we already own some that we could (temporarily) repurpose. Now, don’t get us wrong – if you’re going to be reflowing more than just a little, there are plenty of alternative methods that don’t involve staring at “rather bright lights” for extended periods of time.

People ’round these parts can’t seem to get enough of reflow: from open source reflow oven controllers to reflowing with a hair straightener we’ve seen quite a bit. If you’re new to the reflow arena, we’ve got zero to hero: reflow style just for you. And if DIY at home reflow isn’t intense enough for you, we’ve got next level reflowing as well.

The full video is after the break, complete with Kasyan TV’s sponsored segment in the middle..

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Building An LED Source For A Fiber Optic Ring Light

November 24, 2013 by 2 Comments

[Peter] has finished up his fiber optic microscope light source. When we last visited [Peter] he created a dimmer circuit for a 10 watt LED. That LED driver has now found its final home in [Peter’s] “Franken-ebay scope”, a stereo microscope built from parts he acquired over several years. Stereo microscopes scopes like these are invaluable for working on surface mount parts, or inspecting PCB problems. [Peter] had the fiber optic ring and whip, but no light source. The original source would have been a 150W Halogen lamp. The 10 watt led and driver circuit was a great replacement, but he needed way to interface the LED to the fiber whip. Keeping the entire system cool would be a good idea too.

This was no problem for [Peter], as he has access to a milling machine. He used an old CPU heat sink from his junk box as the base of the light source. The heat sink was drilled and tapped for the LED. The next problem was the actual fiber whip interface. For this, [Peter] milled a custom block from aluminum bar stock. The finished assembly holds the LED, driver, and the fiber whip. A sheet metal bracket allows the entire assembly to be mounted on the microscope’s post.  We have to admit, if we were in [Peter’s] place, we would have gone with a cheap LED ring light. However, the end result is a very clean setup that throws a ton of light onto whatever [Peter] needs magnified.

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