Cheap(ish) vapour phase unit

[Mike]

https://eleshop.eu/vapour-phase-mini-condens-it.html

[SteveW]

Interesting - not as tall as I'd like, meaning vapour's got an easy path to escape or condense inconveniently. If it's really losing over a cc of fluid per run, the floor's going to get hellish slippery!
Still tempted, but my lashup seems to work pretty nicely.

[Gopher]

As I understand it, how well this performs will be dependent on how well thermally balanced your PCB is and if this oven has got the initial warming stages right. Some of the reasons Vapor phase hasn't made the inroads its advantages suggest it should are because not getting these two things right can result in way more tombstoning that you would see in a good convection oven. I'm told major Vapor phase manufacturers have the ramp/preheat stage licked these days, however when you scale up the process they rapidly get very expensive to buy.
This does look like a handy device to have, if you use sensitive or expensive components this has to be better than those hot drawer things on eBay.

[Mickyblueeyes]

I run Vapour phase here, apart from the problems of tombstoning the other major headache is that you can't use aluminium electrolytics as the contents boil up and can explode. I am currently looking around for 400V caps for an offline switcher that is compatible with Vapour phase, but without electrolytics other technologies cost too much.

Mike

[Gopher]

Dense population of  electrolytics can cause a problem in any process, particularly with lead free where many parts reflow quite close to the limit. However lead free solder melts around 217C so one would assume you could successfully use a Galden fluid with a boiling point around 230? Lots of things will easily be getting to that temperature in forced air convection if the board has other "massive" devices to heat or a ceramic PCB, is the electrolyte boiling or is it something more basic like it getting hot too quickly? A quick google does reveal several manufacturers excluding VPS as a process for electrolytic capacitors, Panasonic seems OK with it with provisos so this is something I'm going to bear in mind when going through with our next Oven purchase.

Also possibly of note a few parts specifically exclude IR or at least limit it to one pass, typically LEDs but I have also seen the same on thermistors.

[Mickyblueeyes]

Hi Gopher, when I bought the machine it was filled with Galden 240 I am currently mixing in Galden 215 to try and get this down to around the 230 degree mark then I might try again with the Panasonics, last time with the galden 240 the top of the cap was domed and it wouldn't have taken much more for it to leak.
I have had a capacitor explode in a convection Oven before when the soldering time was extended due to high mass parts.