Hotplate-Soldering-Iron

Hotplate-Soldering-Iron is a C++ library typically used in Internet of Things (IoT), Arduino applications. Hotplate-Soldering-Iron has no bugs, it has no vulnerabilities and it has low support. You can download it from GitHub.

(Click on the images for a small video.). Basic idea of the hotplate is slightly different from the standard tools like a reflow oven or soldering irons. The heat is supplied from the bottom of the PCB. Something similar is the Reflow Skillet from SparkFun: They tested several methods to solder SMD components to PCBs and it turns out that their Skillet is the best solution for makers with a small budget. Inspired by this, my first thoughts about this old flatiron I found in the garage were to build a similar hot plate thing for soldering. And it turns out that this is working like a charm. Concept of this is that the wemos d1 mini controls the solid state relay based on temperature informations from the thermocouple sensor, which I placed with some heat resistant kapton tape directly onto the iron (actually the sensor should be placed onto the PCB for preciser temperature readings). If you have a really fast iron than maybe you should use something like a PID controller. For me and my very sluggish iron a normal threshold based control is enough for now. I added my simple threshold code to this repository. It takes about 3 minutes for the whole soldering process, which is very fast, compared to some professional solutions like reflow ovens. Maximal temperature is something about 220-240 degrees, depending on several things like used solder paste, PCB thickness, ...