> if you are at the level of doing smd reflow, there are significantly better tools What do you mean by "at the level of doing reflow"? Techniques like this de

> if you are at the level of doing smd reflow, there are significantly better tools What do you mean by "at the level of doing reflow"? Techniques like this demonstrate that "the level" of doing reflow is much more attainable by resource-constrained hackers than people sometimes think. Many years ago, when my personal time-vs-money tradeoff was different, I made a number of surface mount PCBs by doing reflow over an ordinary candle or paraffin lamp. I would balance the PCB on a piece of metal shim to act as a heat spreader and keep the board from getting sooty. It worked really quite well up to a couple square inches — the trick was learning how to follow a preheat profile to keep the small passives from tombstoning.