Dave M wrote:

Anyone have any experience or have colleagues who have experience using
the Chinese-made reflow soldering ovens such as those being sold on the
evil
auction place? The one I've looked at is item number:262955348183 (Model
T962).

My eyes have become the major challenge to producing the one- or two-off
projects, since many of the parts that are available today are only made
in
SMD packages. I realize that placing them onto the board still remains a
challenge, but at least with a proper oven, I won't have to hold a
soldering iron steady enough to build the boards.
I have a toaster oven converted to a reflow oven with a ramp and soak
temperature controller. But, for one-offs, I do not use it.

To do manual assembly by reflow, first you need to apply solder paste to the
board, either dot by dot or with a stencil. Then, you need to apply ALL the
parts. If you just TOUCH the sufrace of the board, you will knock parts out
of alignment. I can't imagine placing dozens of parts with tweezers without
knocking them out of place. I do this with my pick and place machine, but I
just take the board off the P&P and straight into the oven, with no fiddling
around with the board. I really don't think this is a sane way to do SMT.

Using a good head-mounted magnifier (or better, a stereo zoom microscope!!)
you can easily place the parts and solder. I put a dab of solder on one pad
of each part location, tack the part down and then solder the other lead(s).
I've been doing this for years for one-offs, it is faster than through-hole.

Jon