Page 195 - Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE from Schematic Designs to Finished Boards

FIGURE 7-20 Cooking the board.

Using a home-made device such as this will never be as reliable as using a professional oven, but
it is fine for prototyping. Making one of these is dangerous and should only be undertaken if you
really know what you are doing. You can find instructions for doing this at the following web pages:

• www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/60
• www.freetronics.com/pages/surface-mount-soldering-with-a-toaster-oven#.Us_cUGRdVyF

Both these tutorials describe how to manage the temperature by hand without the need for a
complex controller. The final board is shown in Figure 7-21. You can see that the LED has moved a
little. This is an effect of my cavalier application of solder paste but can be easily corrected with a
little hand soldering.