I was working on the Toaster-Flo 328 and I became curious as to the price of PCB manufacturing. I use JLCPCB and I wanted to get these boards made in a black silkscreen with ENIG finishing. The only issue is, both of those features add lead time and cost. To the tune of more than double the price of the board normally. This was unacceptable for me and I saw that I can reduce the price by quite a bit by keeping the board under 52mm per side. So thats what I did!

It turned out to be pretty crazy to fit everything but I think I did just fine. I am still routing the traces but its underway. This is a 4 layer board, for what it's worth.

What is Toaster-Flo?

Toaster-Flo is a system I am designing that will allow a user to convert a standard, dumb, consumer toaster oven into an oven capable of executing solder reflow profiles. This makes for a cheap tool that people can use to produce PCBAs in house. You place your components on your PCB using solder paste, and put it in the oven. Toaster-Flo will then follow a PID loop to determine when the toaster oven is powered on in order to preheat, soak, reflow, and cool the PCB, with the end result being a perfectly soldered board! This system is ideal for PCBAs consisting mainly of SMD components and is many times cheaper than commercially available, bespoke, solder reflow ovens.

Hello all! I added the ability to post news and blog posts here! I will try to keep this updated but there are no promises. I won't guarantee regular updates, who knows if I will even continue writing these? I hope you enjoy the site!

At the very least, you'll be able to see what i'm up to if you look at the projects tab.