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heads up to anyone (and future me 👴🏼) who comes to this video trying to tune their unit as described towards the end of the video. when turning the internal POT 3296 the temperature of the unit will not update on the external display, one will have to power cycle the unit in order to display the updated temp from turning the POT, counter clockwise will reduce the temp while turning clockwise will increase the starting temp, and it looks like this 3296 pot accepts 10x turns. so be warned before turning the POT endlessly or else temperatures will be totally off base. great video BTW

Thorough review, Steve. Thanks!

Thanks for your review again, I was lookin for such tool, since I do some rework on car ecus pcbs and there is some power components and mosfets which need lot of heat.

Thanks Steve! I got one identical to that one in the USA at Circuit Specialists. It is pretty tall to use under the microscope. I have to buy a drafting chair so I can sit high enough and still have plenty of working distance. When using a populated board that won't sit in the groove, I just position the board where I want it and use some Kapton tape to keep the board in place. I love mine!

Yihua's recent year models got updates that improve their build quality (also they have a QR code sticker on the to verify that the product is genuine, there seem to be some inferior build quality clones ?), i got my Yihua 862d+ rework station (soldering iron + heat gun) for fixing our school electronic equipment and like it very much. About the 853A preheater i ordered this exact one, for 100 Euro from Germany. I am still waiting for it to arrive. A downside of this preheater is that it does not come with a stand for mounting the heat gun, but i ll get a long flexible arm holder for mobiles / tablets, and it will mount it to the wall

Excellent video and very informatively explained, Steve! Thanks for that. I just bought an identical product (albeit under the M-Link brand) and was curious to see its accuracy, stability, etc before firing it up. One question: rather than relying just on convection, would it be an idea to place a solid metal plate under the PCB? I am thinking that this could provide for a more uniform temperature across the X-Y axes of the board AND perhaps reduce the large temperature gradient we are seeing on this video (between the top of the PCB vs the top of the heating plate)? Do you think this is a good idea?

Nice item

Thanks for the video, did you ever do a follow-up and manage to reflow a complete board?

turning the internal 3296 pot 180º appears to adjust the temp reading by ~ 14ºC

My guess is, those caps on the main controller will go before anything else. I would probably replace them with Panasonic or Nichicon once I received it.

Can you put larger PCB on it than what those holder would allow? Like a motherboard?

These generic "branded" tools can be a hit or miss. I recently bought a unbranded 858D+ from amazon in Germany and before even turning it on i opened it up, and to my surprise it was FLAWLESS! Grounded all the way to the nozzle tip with 0.0 Ohms, fuse on the live side (pretty useless for Europe tho), all the solder joints and crimp connectors done nicely and it was pretty darn good calibrated too. The best part, it was only 40 Euro shipped with DHL!

maybe adding a fan underneath to help transfer the heat to the PCB

Thank's for the review. If you could only have one, would you go for one of those IR preheaters or a hot plate?

No 110V units? Hmmmm.... Can a full size laptop m/b fit on that unit?🤔 Thanks

What if you have plastic parts like sockets on yout PCB will it melt or warp them.

If the thermocouple you're using is just resting against the heater, it won't have a particularly large surface contact area. Whenever I use a thermocouple for something like this, I put a SMALL blob of thermal paste on the DUT and then plunge the thermocouple into the paste. Still not ideal, but far better. I wonder what your thermocouple specs are? One of the problems with them is that whilst they can stretch far beyond the range of most linear output sensors, they tend to sacrifice accuracy, but I wouldn't expect much more than 0.1% error. I have a Druck thermal bath here (trusted source) so I think nothing of crimping a bit of thermocouple extension wire to make my own, and then proving them in the bath. Maybe that would be an interesting project? Make up a temperature source and have it sent off for calibration so that you knew its error. This way, you can prove measurements with your source. Thanks for the video on the pre-heat station, especially the teardown. Even the budget stuff from China is starting to really up its game with quality. The caps are still wan hung-lo, but they seem to get the message about basic fusing and earth points.

Shouldnt you be wearing some eye protection with it being IR ? Or is it safe to look at IR bare eyes?

Hi, i read in Eevblog that the insulation of the heater might contain asbestos um a similar Best brand unit. Can you say its asbestos free? What material contains inside the ceramic heater frame to do thermal insulation of the heater?

А как калибровку делать ?

Can I preheat broken screen on my phone?

Can we make bga reballing with this

Hello, that flux from your Banggood URL doesn't look like genuine AMTECH flux. Some say it's repackaged Kingbo and that it works fine for them. Any AMTECH syringe with that shiny holographic circle label is not actual AMTECH. The label should be green, not white.

are u getting all this for free?

А как калибровку делать ?