Make an IR Soldering Iron

[Steve Wilson]

The hot air from a heat gun used to change ic's can damage nearby components.
Commercial IR heaters can be expensive.

Here's a very inexpensive DIY IR soldering iron that can do the job.

The video is in Russian but is easy to understand. You can probably think of
many ways to optimize it to suit your needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2legyrYhdw

In Canada, you can get the cigarette lighter from Amazon, at

https://www.amazon.ca/TR-OD-Cigarette-Lighter-Ignition-
Rhinestone/dp/B07CP37J33

You don't care about the rhinstones. They will get tossed.

 

[Klaus Kragelund]

Quite nice 👍

Could perhaps be made a little more directional by adding a IR shaping front end (fancy name for a tube)

Cheers

Klaus

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Wed, 24 Jul 2019 10:19:41 GMT) it happened Steve Wilson
<no@spam.com> wrote in <XnsAA96405FCD1CBidtokenpost@69.16.179.23>:

The hot air from a heat gun used to change ic's can damage nearby components.
Commercial IR heaters can be expensive.

Here's a very inexpensive DIY IR soldering iron that can do the job.

The video is in Russian but is easy to understand. You can probably think of
many ways to optimize it to suit your needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2legyrYhdw

Very nice!

 

[Steve Wilson]

Klaus Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:

Quite nice

Could perhaps be made a little more directional by adding a IR shaping
front end (fancy name for a tube)

Cheers

Klaus

Thanks. That would be a useful option.

 

[John Robertson]

On 2019/07/24 3:19 a.m., Steve Wilson wrote:

The hot air from a heat gun used to change ic's can damage nearby components.
Commercial IR heaters can be expensive.

Here's a very inexpensive DIY IR soldering iron that can do the job.

The video is in Russian but is easy to understand. You can probably think of
many ways to optimize it to suit your needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2legyrYhdw

In Canada, you can get the cigarette lighter from Amazon, at

https://www.amazon.ca/TR-OD-Cigarette-Lighter-Ignition-
Rhinestone/dp/B07CP37J33

You don't care about the rhinstones. They will get tossed.

Thanks Steve, an interesting low-cost tool to play with. Add an IR probe
and an adjustable 12VDC supply and I'll bet you could make it even more
useful. And add Klaus's suggested tube/hood.

It is a bit hot right now, the single-sided PCB looks a bit cooked after
the parts were removed.

The Amazon rating for your rhinestone ones is not so good, one might be
better off going to Canadian Tire or some other brick & mortar car
parts/wrecker store to get something reliable...or digging in your junk
drawer.

Thanks for posting it!

John :-#)#

 

[Robert Roland]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2019 10:45:00 -0700, John Robertson <spam@flippers.com>
wrote:

or digging in your junk
drawer.

...or if you don't smoke, just get the one from your car.
--
RoRo

 

[whit3rd]

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 10:45:15 AM UTC-7, John Robertson wrote:

On 2019/07/24 3:19 a.m., Steve Wilson wrote:
The hot air from a heat gun used to change ic's can damage nearby components.
Commercial IR heaters can be expensive.

Or inexpensive. Heat lamps (just 300W incandescents, really, with a PAR
reflector) can do the job at close range (circa 4 inch spot size) and
I've successfully used those (with a mica window, so the spatter wouldn't
hit the incandescent envelope).

Regulated power is the wrong way to use this (cigarette-lighter-element) kind
of gizmo, really; a variac and transformer for stepdown/isolation
should be on every workbench anyhow, so just use those...