Anyone off to VCF-UK

[Philip Pemberton]

On 29/05/10 18:07, Tony Duell wrote:
> And if you ever try to calibrate an oven thermostat you will find those
> figures bear absolutely no relationship to any normal temperature scale.

I've got a "Cookworks" mini-oven (which came from Argos, natch). At the 
250C setting, it heated up to almost 300C before the bimetal thermostat 
tripped. 525 seconds from room temperature (25C or so) to 300C, for a 
thermal gradient of 1.75 Celsius per second.

Put it this way: it makes a good SMD soldering oven (google for Kenneth 
Maxon's article on the subject in the Seattle Robotics Society 
newsletter, "Encoder")...

One of these days I'll put a proper temperature control on it. And add 
some thermal insulation to the door and handle section -- it gets bloody 
hot! Might improve the thermal gradient a bit (though it really only 
needs to be ~1C/sec once the oven cavity is warm).

-- 
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/