HeatingPlate

HeatingPlate

Description:

This is a heating plate used to make PCBs. The diy method is much cheaper than the ones on the market. The project still misses the code and final product. Next update this year.

[!CAUTION] The project require working with high voltage. Please be aware of the death or fire risks.

How it works:

The heating plate is turned on and off trouth the solid state realay, and have adittional cooling with the fans to keep a fixed steady temperature. The heating plate is fed with 220V AC, the fans and the 3.3V regulator are fed with 12V from the convertor and the rest of the board runs on 3.3V. I added a screen, a buzzer and an encoder for basic input and output to the STM32.

Key points

• manual temperature set and timer
• use and create temperature curves
• automatic and manual calibration
• power outage, fake inputs and miss heating protections so you don`t burn anything around.
• lock mode for messy enviroments
• plug and use, small and smart design (not so preety)
• the cade can be uploaded with just stm32CubeProgrammer directely without many modifications.

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OLD VERSIONS

Altium design

I recived an Altium 2023 licence 6 months ago, and just now tried using it. After 4 days I abandoned the project because it`s verry awfull to work with altium:

• has wierd controls (space to rotate part; TAB to pause the tracing process for accessing proprieties pannel)
• I didn`t found the keyboard shorcuts editor
• has no standard library pack... if you need an 0603 smd rsistor of 10K, you have to look for the part on mouser or to make it yourself, or search a library with it It has no generic part for 0603 components and you preety much have to make all the simbols and footprints from the datasheet before you start desigmning
• isn`t easy to switch fast from schematic to PCB with the components, and the schematic grid is awfull.
• the only thing I liked from before, is editing the components location in 3D viewing mode. in conclusion I think this is usefull only for the companies witch order the specific parts already assembled with the pcb and need to chose an exact part from the buyer. This is not usefulll for hobby projects when you need to do something fast or open source projects when the altium licence cost over $10.000.

I started the board in kicad, I thinked to move to Altium for this project, but in the fourth day, I made some changes on the kicad schematic and seeing how hard is to do anything in altium, I abandoned the altium project. I will work with altium only at the companies where they need the board already assembled and very specific parts and prices.

Heating plate V1

I made a test pcb, but the footprint for the ssr was wrong, and after testing the esp32 knockoff programming and having some problems, I switched to stm32.

Heating plate V2

This is a functional board but the design is verry bad to be used with the case. Initialy I tried combining my hot air station with this heat plate project to make a soldering station with both, but the case felt too big, "easy to break", hallow and just felt wrong. like it had an almost 30x15x15cm case for 2 pcb`s and some fans. So I separated the PCB in 2 control boards and added more test points at accessible locations.

Heating plate V3

As the forth version I moved the ports to make all the wires come from the back side but that still wasan`t good enouch for the enclosure so I started again from 0. I dropped the number of fans from 4 to 2 considering the airflow and useness ratio(with 2 fans the cooling speed is reduced from 20-30min to 5-10min), I took out from the pcb the encoder to keep the components at the same height on the pcb and changed hack to common 2.54 connectors for ease of components.

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Heating plate V5 (Final designs)

This is the current design, the PCB design and the final case. when making the air intake holes make sure you have 1.2 or 1.5 times more space at intake than at the exhaust. Use a stress relief sleve or build something for the power cable so when the cable is pulled to pull the case not the pcb traces.

[!IMPORTANT] Start designing the case then the make pcb port placement and modify both for best fitting and functionality. Then start the pcb rouing.

[!NOTE] the design does not need to be 1:1 or make complicated calculus. you can replace any parts at your own need. like use a normal arduino relay, buy a more powerfull plate, use other microcontroller like ESP32 and add wifi or bluetooth functionality, use another powering method or another display.

Parts list(aliexpress prices):

• ($11) 500w Desoldering plate from
• ($2.0) Solid state relay
• ($1.5) Trhermistor
• ($3.0) 4pcs x 40x40mm 12V fans
• ($1.0) 400mA 220V AC -> 12V DC convertor
• ($1) STM32F103CBT6 or ESP8266-MOD SOC
• ($2.0) I2C display, buzzer, encoder
• ($4.0) 3.3V regulator and other passive components
• ($5.0) JLC-PCB boards
• ($5.0) Enclosure

TOTAL: arround $35 (the prices may fluctuate) components

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7blZigaaaA&list=PLOSOqCeZCHL0Qxb6YyrvGzjCg9FLfzHYJ&index=154&t=11s
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q0mh3y_XBc&list=PLOSOqCeZCHL0Qxb6YyrvGzjCg9FLfzHYJ&index=155