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10 zone oven settings

Views: 22574

#92257

10 zone oven settings | 20 September, 2025

We have a new 10 zone oven but do not have a profiler yet. We are using lead free sac305 paste and would like to know what are the temps used for each of the 10 zones that would get us close for good feflow until we can profile?

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#92258

10 zone oven settings | 20 September, 2025

We have a new 10 zone oven but do not have a profiler yet. We are using lead free sac305 paste and would like to know what are the temps used for each of the 10 zones that would get us close for good feflow until we can profile?

reply »

#92260

10 zone oven settings | 22 September, 2025

No one is going to answer your question Bob, because there is no answer. In order to know what "temperatures to use" (and don't forget the conveyor speed, convection rates, etc) you require a representative profile board- properly thermocoupled- along with the profiler you don't have yet.

Anything short of that is nothing more than a guess.

Good luck.

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#92261

10 zone oven settings | 23 September, 2025

Find the reps for KIC, ECD, and Datapaq. Ask for a demo.

Ask the solder paste rep if they have a profiler and if they can profile a couple boards for you. They don't want you switching paste because you got bad joints because you had bad profiles.

Ask reps for other solder paste for samples if they have a profiler and will profile a few boards for you.

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#92262

10 zone oven settings | 23 September, 2025

Find the reps for KIC, ECD, and Datapaq. Ask for a demo.

Ask the solder paste rep if they have a profiler and if they can profile a couple boards for you. They don't want you switching paste because you got bad joints because you had bad profiles.

Ask reps for other solder paste for samples if they have a profiler and will profile a few boards for you.

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#92263

10 zone oven settings | 24 September, 2025

Not really all that true. If someone with the same model of oven wanted to, they could share their default starting point profile. One that in all probability they simply use as is on a huge proportion of their assemblies. Designing bespoke profiles for every product is impractical nonsense most us are not able to implement for any number of reasons.

However the only info we have is 10-zone. Which could mean anything from a Chinese 5 zone oven that counts top and bottom to inflate numbers to an 8 zone oven with two cooling zones to a 10 zone oven with no active cooling zones to a completely different 10 zone oven where each zone is 20-30% larger than its rivals.

However most oven come with a basic on board profiler, that if you have long enough probes will give you a decent idea of how it is performing. At least enough to get you started, you could combine that with looking at any example profiles used in a solder paste datasheet. For example BLT circuit services use a 10 zone soltec oven in their datasheets with the presets they used to gain RSS and RTS profiles for their paste.

And Stephen is right, any of themain solder suppliers I could choose to use in the UK would 100% come and help me dial in a new reflow oven, and indeed have done so.

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#92272

10 zone oven settings | 25 September, 2025

With respect, the setpoints for a .030" thick board with a few passives on it will bear little-to-no resemblance to those req'd for a .125" thick, densely-populated, double-sided board with BGAs, large inductors, etc.

Having the paste or profiler people come in to assist does have merit as a one-off, but they're not going to come in every time Bob has a profile that needs to be moved to another oven, a customer reports a reflow-related quality issue that needs investigation, introduction of other new products, etc. They'll do it to try to sell you on their product- and rightly so, because it's important.

Having someone provide a "typical" profile might give Bob solder joints that look nice, but looks aren't everything.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Bob needs a profiler and he most likely could have one by now if he had ordered it the same day he asked his question. He also needs to convince his customer to allow him to scrap a couple of populated boards (assuming double-sided reflow).

If any of these things are missing it's a guess.

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