Need advice on quartz infrared owen for electronics

[Morcego]

Dear all,

I know little(nothing actually) of infrared heating. But i need to build a machine to solder surface mount electronic components. The purpose is to build a kind of tunnel with quartz infrared elements inside. The board will travel slowly inside the tunnel and the solder paste will be melted. Knowing that solder melts at 260ºC will this solution work?

From the datasheets of several infrared elements the board must be at a certain distance of the PCB board (100 to 200mm)
to get the most of the element. Is that true? Should I put the element above the board? under? both?

Finally having an elent of 150W or 500W, the only thing different seems to be time to achive the desired temperature.
Is that true also?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Joaquim

 

[IRstuff]

Why do you need to "build" this machine? There are already plenty of existing commercial machines that do this job.

TTFN
faq731-376