2018-12-09

Because I can not leave well enough alone, I decided to add insulation to my reflow toaster. Bellow are the results of the “learn mode” of the reflow controller. Basically what the controller does is ramp the heaters up and down and measure the temperature change vs time vs relay on-time. For more details go here: http://www.whizoo.com/intelligent . The hope was that as more insulation was added the oven score would improve.

This is the oven score before the added insulation. 88% – that’s pretty good. Only 12% off from 100%

This is after the insulation was added, but immediate after an aborted learn run. I aborted a run because I had the ceiling fan on and that tends to mess with the oven. Yes it’s true. We seem to have gone down 8%. That’s discouraging, but perhaps it’s due to the aborted run.

This is after the learn mode the following morning. The oven was stone-cold.

What the hell. Power requirements went down – 33%/32% from 35%/33%. Inertia went down slightly – 92s/72s from 96s/71s. Insulation retention time went up significantly – 244s from 207s. All metrics are up across the board and yet the overall score went down 16%! What in the every loving name of Baphomet. Clearly the controller is smoking crack.

Two lessons to be learned here: 1) don’t blindly believe in numbers, “metrics”, “performance goals”, etc. 2) Don’t smoke crack.

Anyways, a few pictures of the build process.

Electrical and top areas before the extra insulation.