With the heating elements working correctly, we moved to the next step, which is to connect the fan into the system as well. The fan will be connected to the microcontroller through another SSR. It will be powered using the line power from the wall. Optimally, we want the fan to always turn on during the whole reflow process. Below is the picture of the new system after the fan is connected in:
With the fan always turned on at 100%, we did the RoastLogger temperature test again to see how fast the oven could heat up.
With Fan on
Apparently, with this new connection, the oven performs much more efficient than what we expected. It could reach to the highest temperature of 640F in only 6 minutes. In 3 minutes, it reached to 510F, which is even beyond what we need for our reflow process. Now that the whole circuit is finished, our next step would be to wrap them up and put the wires and components into separated boxes.
