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I'm researching low-end conveyer reflow ovens, i.e. the sorts one can find on AliExpress. Most of the cheapest ones use IR heating, and there are a few hot air models. And of course, many listings showing the usual T-962 or some similar drawer oven, calling it some misleading term like "hot air IR". My application would be intermittent in-house production of small batches of niche products in a one-person shop; not contract assembly, and not high volume. Right in that valley of despair between soldering up a few one-offs vs. sending it out to a contract assembler.
I gather that hot air is preferable over IR, because I'd think that it would be less prone to hot and cold spots based on differing IR absorption of components on the board being soldered. Can anybody here with real experience in this area explain in detail how I should expect results to vary between a cheaper, smaller, lower-power-draw IR oven vs. a more expensive, larger, higher-power-draw hot air oven?
Does an IR conveyer oven even make sense with respect to temperature profile accuracy? I think that one of the rationales of a conveyer oven is to allow heating and cooling rates that are faster than a hot-air system can slew if it has enough thermal mass to regulate worth a damn, without requiring huge peak power draws to slew the temperature quickly. But doesn't IR heating allow rapid enough changes in heat input to the board that moving a board through different zones of constant irradiation wouldn't work any better than leaving the board stationary and varying the IR tube power? And with respect to production rate, does the pipelining inherent in a conveyer oven offer a significant advantage over a few cheaper drawer-type ovens sitting side by side, given that the preceding stages would be a sub-$10k imported PnP machine and a manual framed stencil printer, all operated by one guy who is questioning his life choices?
Many of the ovens sold via AliExpress are listed as being specially designed for LED mounting. Does that actually have any technical meaning in reflow ovens, or is it just some labeling that they throw on there to appeal to a market that happens to be making a lot of LED lighting products right now? I think I've seen some PnP place machines that really are specialized for LED lighting manufacturing, in that they claim a high CPH rate and deliberately have only a few feeders.