For less than $30 USD, you can get a 10×10 centimeter hotplate with 350 Watts of power. Sounds mighty fine to us, so surely there must be a catch? Maybe not, as [Stefan Nikolaj]’s review of this AliExpress hotplate details, it seems to be just fine enough.
At this price, you’d expect some shoddy electronics inside, or maybe outright fiery design decisions, in the vein of other reviews for similar cheap heat-producing tech that we’ve seen over the years. Nope – the control circuitry seems to be more than well-built for our standards, with isolation and separation where it matters, the input being fused away, and the chassis firmly earthed. [Stefan] highlights just two possible problem areas: a wire nut that could potentially be dodgy, and lack of a thermal fuse. Both can be remedied easily enough after you get one of these, and for the price, it’s a no-brainer. Apart from the review, there’s also general usage recommendations from [Stefan] in the end of the blog post.
While we’re happy to see folks designing their own PCB hotplates or modifying old waffle irons, the availability of cheap turn-key options like this means there’s less of a reason to go the DIY route. Now, if you’re in the market for even more build volume, you can get one of the classic reflow ovens, and maybe do a controller upgrade while you’re at it.
I’d been mulling over getting something like this, so this was well-timed :) And always lovely to come across a blog like this – Stefan is doing a great job sharing what he learns with the world. Stefan if you read this, thank you and keep it up :D
I have the same one and have found it very useful so far.
I grabbed one of these little hotplates in a panic a few days before Supercon when I was having trouble reflowing SAOs. It does the job, but for mine it’s worth noting the shortcomings. The temperature on the display didn’t match the temperature on the plate – it was usually around 10-15c below. There is no programmable reflow profile (more obviously, with the pictured one above).
That said, this gets the job done. They heat up very fast and reflow solder.
I’ve got this exakt model. Works pretty well. I don’t think it is quite fast enough for reflowing, but still pretty quick. They come in 1515cm and 2020cm too. But those models have less power/cm2 so I’d expect them to be a bit slower. Should be just fine for pre-heating purposes.