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.
i have the same one and i use a separate aluminium plate holding the pcb. i place that on the hot plate and take it off when the re-flowing is finished. then i place it on a thick aluminium block to cool it down. with several plates, you can work quite fast.
I think someone did a teardown of this one and got to the conclusion that the heat on the bed is uneven (because of the heater being a rod). Loose screws holding various cables have also been reported on this model IIRC. Been reviewing a few but many seem built with substandard components.
I can really recommend the USB-C PD powered ones you can find for like $20 on amazon/ebay. There seems to be different variants but they’re typically white with aluminum fins and a plate on top. At least get one, they’re super cheap, and then you can decide if you need another one later. They’re not that large but you probably don’t need that large of a heater either, it will heat the whole PCB and a specific part of the board anyway. Caveat: make sure the charger can deliver 20V or it won’t get hot enough – there’s a 5V/20V indicator on the screen. Usage: put it at e.g. 125 C using the right button, hold both buttons to turn on/off, solder components on top with hot air with ease!
Does anyone have the link for the actual unit? The actual article doesn’t…
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-350W-Electric-Soldering-Hot-Plate-Microcomputer-We.html
This is a generic search. Not a link to the PARTICULAR one tested.
That “wire nut” that pulled right off is a crimp connector. It looks like someone forgot to crimp it. They make a secure connection when used properly.
I bought the 15x15cm one for souldering my LEDs on the GoL Cube PCBs (https://hackaday.io/project/203239-conway-s-game-of-life-on-a-led-cube), though I also used a hot air iron slightly blowing from above to make the soldering faster. Worked perfekt. And now good to see this review. And I will also open it up and add a Wago – if the same nut is used in my device.
Since people are asking, I found this one that looks very similar to the pictures in the blog post: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008571952390.html
I’ve been hoping for a review of the Sequre T55, which is similarly cheap on AliExpress but has upstream support in IronOS.