T-962A Reflow Oven

T-962A Reflow Oven
Manufacturer	PUHUI (?)
Model	T-962A Reflow Oven
AKA	Cookie
Obtained	Pledge Drive (Jan 2025)
Location	Electronics Area
Team	Electronics
Induction Required	No
Booking	{{{booking}}}
Status	Defunct
Risk Assessment	Yes, see the assessment
Tools:   all pages • list • Power Tools • Broken tools     {{}}

As part of the 2025 Electronics Pledge Drive, a T-962A (v2) reflow oven was purchased. The oven can be used for soldering SMT components, after selectively applying solder paste and populating a board with components. Multiple boards can be soldered at the same time, although be wary of temperature variation across the inside of the oven. A PDF copy of the oven manual has been uploaded to the wiki: T-962A v2.0 User Manual.

The T-962 reflow oven has an interesting reputation within the hacker community. It's certainly in the "low end" category of reflow ovens, but hackable enough to make it work well. The T-962A fixed several significant issues with the previous model, but still had its quirks. Version 2.0 of the T-962A (what we have!) attempts to fix most of those flaws, but also uses an entirely different controller, making it more difficult to mod as a suitable open source firmware has not been developed (yet?). Still, the machine performs quite well, but do not set your expectations so high as to end up with a perfect board every time - manual touching up may be required on smaller pitch components.

Process

Soldering a board with the oven!

1. Turn on the Electronics Extraction. This should be on before turning the oven on.
2. Turn on the oven. The power switch is at the rear of the unit. Once powered on it will show several language options. Use the arrow keys to select your preferred language (presumably English at the bottom), and press the okay button.
3. Scroll down to "Select Temp Curve" and press okay. You can scroll through various temperature curves. The first board was done with Curve 3 and turned out ok. Once done you can go back to the previous menu with the okay button.
4. Place your board in the middle of the drawer.
5. Begin the cycle by selecting "Execute Temp Cruve" followed by the ok button. The oven will begin to ramp up temperature. Once it's done it will start beeping, press the ok button to silence it.
6. Leave the oven powered on until it has cooled down.

The board will be very hot. Use tweezers to remove, or let it cool down before handling.

If the oven is unable to reach the desired temperature, it will start aggressively beeping at you. - This has happened when the extraction was hooked up differently prevented the oven from reaching its desired temperature.

Tips

• If it's cold, run the heating cycle first to get the starting temperature up.
• For small boards (a couple of centimetres), the manual recommends placing a larger board underneath. This helps spread the temperature into the board.

Temperature Curves

• Curve 1 - For 85Sn/15Pb and 70Sn/30Pb solder.
• Curve 2 - For 63Sn/37Pb and 60Sn/30Pb solder.
• Curve 3 - For Sn/Ag3.5, Sn/Cu0.75 and Sn/Ag4.0 Cu0.5 solder paste.
• Curve 4 - For Sn/Ag2.5 Cu0.8 Sb0.5 and Sn/Bi3.0 Ag3.0 solder paste.
• Curve 5 - For curing of red glue (e.g. Heraeus PD955M).
• Curve 6 - For "PCB Rework etc." (basically, unknown).
• Curve 7 and Curve 8 are user curves which can be programmed (I think) through the serial port.

Solder Pastes

Most general purpose solder pastes seem to be 63Sn/37Pb or Sn/Ag3.5, so if you are unsure curve 3 or 4 will probably be a good starting point.

• MG Chemicals 49000P (SAC305) - Use Curve 4

Oven Improvements

There are generally a bunch of recommended improvements to make to T-962 and T-962A ovens. The oven was purchased with the intention of making them, but so far, not much has been required. Our oven is the v2 T-962A, which seems to compensate for ambient temperature, provide a nicer user interface, fix issues with grounding, and avoids the use of masking tape in hot areas.