Danger: Do not use your reflow toaster oven for cooking food! Solder used in reflow ovens include lead and other dangerous metals and must not be used in the same oven for cooking food.

The EZ Make Oven uses an unmodified toaster oven. This means you don't need to take it apart and void the warranty like some other reflow oven projects. This can be purchased online or at your nearest small appliance store.

The toaster oven needed for this project is a simple, manual toaster oven, since it is controlled at the power outlet, not by the oven's front panel  controls. These are fairly economical in price since no fancy electronics are needed. It should be small (4 slice capacity), at least 1100 watts and a maximum temperature of 450F / 230C or better.

You probably should not choose a convection toaster oven if given the choice. Although they may create a more even air temperature in the oven, they are typically much larger than what is needed for a reflow oven. Also, a convection oven fan could, in theory, create a wind force that moves small, light-weight components off their pads on the PCB. The exception to this is a toaster oven marketed as using "natural convection", which is what this project is using. This type of oven does not use a fan, and the only visible difference between this and a regular toaster oven is the use of rounded corners in the interior. Presumably this enhances the air flow to make the temperature more even throughout the oven.

There are many toaster ovens to choose from that fit these requirements. For this project, we used the Black & Decker Natural Convection Toaster Oven, model TO1755SB, which can fit 4 slices of bread (as in toast, not breadboards :-) ).

Before using your toaster oven, you will need to set the oven temperature to it's maximum setting. Each toaster oven may have different ways to accomplish this. Some may have a maximum temperature, some may call it "toast" mode. Make sure the toast mode is not using a timer. If it does, check to see if you can override it with a "stay on" timer option. Otherwise, you will need to set the timer to its maximum and reset it each time you use the oven. Also, do not use the "broil" toaster option. This will only use the top heating element, and we want both top and bottom heating elements in use for our reflow oven.

This guide was first published on Oct 23, 2019. It was last updated on Mar 14, 2024.

This page (The Toaster Oven) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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