You get what you pay for. I bought the UYUE 946C unit over 2 years ago 150$..same size as this...no smoke, temp close to 10 deg worst case and I use it every week to flow solder around 20 PCB's with perfect results. As I said...get what you pay for.
when they make the plate they probably use oil and also the paint probably. I may purchase something other than a 946c. or let it bake all the smells out outside... hmm
This is typical of any machined part from China, they use a heavy sulfur cutting/machine oil in the manufacturing process, drilling, tapping, etc...This oil has a foul smell before heating and now will cause smoke residue to remain. I'm sure that it was all over the heating plate, it is also used to prevent corrosion during shipping and storage. The defects in the surface are probably voids or defects in the material that was used to manufacture the plate steel. You could have disassembled it and cleaned it with turpentine or lacquer thinner before applying 700° F heat to the device, now that oil residue will be near impossible to remove because it is baked into the metal like seasoning on a cast iron skillet. For under $80 delivered from China is fairly reasonable for that device, I would never buy anything like this from Amazon. That's all they sell over there is junk from China. Circuit Specialists have a hot air preheat device for $73, ships form Arizona and they have customer service. Better luck next time Corg. Thanks for the entertainment!
Circuit Specialists sell the same crap as Amazon and EBay. The preheating IR station they sell is no better than the one in this video. It heats up a lot faster but the heat distribution is even worse. It's an open heating element, no plate on top of it. I have tried one with 4" X 4" PCB and the center of it got overheated to the point it changed color, while the edges were so much lower in temperature, that the components didn't reflow. Mainly because of the brackets holding the PCB absorbing the heat. It did improve after placing an one inch square sheet metal peace over the heating element, but it's still a joke, not a tool to rely on. Also the temperature reading was very inaccurate, from what I remember 50 degrees lower than the actual one.
No, it smelled so bad the last thing I wanted to do was open it. Also, I didn't want to mess with something that I was returning. I had this thing packed and at the UPS office about an hour after I finished filming it... what a stench.
