Buying a new Reflow Oven

I've mostly been looking at the smallest oven in the range of the bigger ovens as it were. So that's the 1707 from Heller and similar sized units from elsewhere. However apparently Heller are apparently bring back the 1500 series in the form of a 1505-S, it doesn't appear on the website yet but they seem to think its remarkably capable for its length and its much wider than the rival weenies. If anyone has any experience with the older 1500 models I'd be interested to hear it.

Thoughts on SunEast? I know I've spotted their ovens in several recent UK press releases going to into new installations. Others inlcude JT and Vanstron, a few people (inc Zen) sell conveyors etc from them. I'm avoiding ovens like Essemtec or the long but suspiciously low profile desk mounted ones. Some of them would almost certainly work for everything I do today, but you have to cover tomorrow when you're about to rearrange your factory floor and spend a decent chunk of change.

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Is heller on that list? Am I the only one who wants smallest coneyorized oven, with lowest zones, using least amount of power, very reliable and repeatable. I currently have essemtecs and an older vitronic 4 zone oven.

There is a 2015 rehm oven near me for sale as a parts oven. It has a lot of zones. Kind of surprised me that a newer oven being scrapped for parts. Not that many rehm ovens in US.

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> If quality or Reliability is the key.... BTU, <BR> > Soltec Vitronics..Rehm... If it is the money <BR> > ...probably not these brands.....:) <BR> <BR>

Well I have a Rehm Quote (Ouch!) and an Electrovert quote which while not a Soltec, does essentially come from the same place. I would imagine the Soltec Centurion costs something similar to the Rehm and that is 35% more than a BTU.

There really isn't a significant cost obstacle to BTU tho' if you take a Heller, add on a lifetime blowers&heater warranty to match BTU they are really very close. If you don't add that warranty however, Heller is by far the cheapest "big brand" oven you can buy.

I did a search on here and found several comments suggesting Hellers blowers were a fairly common point of failure. However ovens last for years and that means those comments could apply to ovens built 10 or 15 years ago rather than something that's true today. It would be interesting to hear non cherry picked experiences from users of the current models (which appear to secretly be called the Mk5.5)

@Reckless Like anyone else who does some contract work, what I want from an oven is confidence that it has the thermal capacity to properly reflow all the very varied and unpredictable work that might come my way. To do that it needs a decent heated length and multiple zones. Yes lots of designs can go into a 3 zone oven and come out looking just fine, but that isn't the same as being able to say the board profile achieved is a good match for the components on the board. Several of the big brand ovens actually don't come in a length small enough for me to comfortably consider in our factory.

The Essemtec ovens are quite nice for what they are, but they are pin or mesh never both, both is my preferred option for flexibility.

I suspect in the Us just like over here you won't see lots of Rehms as they are expensive and mostly popular in automotive/aerospace as they like the options for crazy amounts of closed loop control, sensors & logging. There are less of these things on some of the other ovens.

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It is a feature we could use, but mostly I turn it on when I have stuff to go through and set it to cooldown when I'm done. We don't run inline so I can buffer a rack or 2 of PCBs if I want to maximise energy efficiency. Warmup time is really good at like 20mins.

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