26th International Spring Seminar on Electronics Technology

May 8 - 11, 2003, Stari Lesnl, Slovak Republic

Thermal Management System for Reflow Oven

Bogdan Rosu, Pablo Reyes-Turcu, Daniel Simion-Zanescu

Center of Technological Electronics and Interconnection Techniques (CETTI)
Politehnica University of Bucharest, 3 13 Splaiul Independentei,#6 Bucharest. Romania
Phone:+4014116674,Fax+4014115182
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract

The intemal thermol environment of a reflow oven is a complex 3 0 temperarure distribution.

Controlling an accurate reflow process inquires to know the inside temperature distribution. Not
all soldering equipments have mobile temperature systems built in. Usually, the oven designer
doesn 't include a monitoring measurement sysrem rhar con control the instantaneous temperature
at the PCB level. The tack of completed information about each solder joint, could produce an
unstoble quality of the solderingprocess. This is the reason we storred a project to build a high-
resolution temperature measurement sysfem. The sensors are wire thermocouples lo assure a high
mobility. The system core confains o dato acquisition cord developed in our center. The
applicarion s o f i a r e takes into account the requirementsfor accurate temperature measurements.
AN details ofrhis project ore described in the paper.

1. INTRODUCTION temperature profile selected is kept the all through the

period of operation.
The paper is a presentation of a performed project
Ten measurement points is considered to he
in CETTI.
enough to have a detailed thermal image at the PCB
Clnputs) level.

a Switch
It is known that thermal dynamic is not very rapid;
therefore very high acquisition rates are not needed.
Inside the reflow oven, the temperature ranges
between room temperature and up to around 400°C.
I
I Precision Amolifier I Knowing the physical conditions inside an reflow
oven, the system was designed to comply with these
requirements; temperature range from O°C (or room
temperature) to 400°C, accuracy of one tenth of
Insulator a degree, ten measurement points and time needed to
acquire all ten temperatures under 0.7s.
A common PC through the parallel port conbrols
the flow and stores data acquired. A graphical user
Figure 1 Block schematics interface controls the entire process.
The main motivation to realize this project is the The project has three parts: first, Design and
necessity to obtain accurate results of temperature Simulation, second, Physical Implementation and third
measurements. Functional test and Adjustments. We present here
The temperatures are measured at the surface of some design and implementation details.
a PCB while passing through a reflow oven.
The need of these measurements is critical to make
DESIGN
2. SCHEMATIC
sure that the right temperature profile is gained when For each of the ten channels, the sensor is
the oven is turned on and also to make sure that the a thermocouple connected to a K connector.

0-7803-8002-9/03/$10.0002003 IEEE 306 26th ISSE 2003

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 26th International Spring Seminar on Electronics Technology
May 8 - 11,2003, Stari Lesni, Slovak Republic

Thermocouples are calibrated in 0450°C domain. The hot junction is represented by the welding of
The maximum voltage trip generated by thermocouple the two wires of the thermocouple and the cold
is several milivolts. junction represented in this case by the K connector
and the adjusting circuitry.
A single instrumentation amplifier is designed for
all the sensors. This is possible using aswitching This adjusting circuit has 'two functions: it
system. The switching function for one channel is represents with good approximation the ideal cold
done by a relay (fig.2) driven by a switching FET, Q4. junction and compensates for the cold junction
The signal gtl is the command from multiplexer temperature and corrects the non-linear characteristic
circuit. of the thermocouple.
The adjusting circuit is designed as a bridge
supplied by a stable reference voltage. Precise values
for resistance bridge's a r m s are needed for the right
correction of thermocouple's characteristic. These
values are obtained by combination of low tolerance
resistors and a potentiometer, which adjusts the value
within the 1.5% range.
The compensation for the room temperature is
done using a low power silicon diode that provides a -
2.2mVPC variation for a significant interval around
room temperature.

Figure 2 One channel switch

,NE1114
There are ten switches, one for each channel. in +
At the output of the multiplexer circuit the result is in - R12
a voltage received from the selected source.
The signal then passes through an adjusting circuit.

Figure 4 Precision amplifier

The signal coming out of the adjusting circuit
passes through an amplifier and then is converted to a
digital number proportional with the voltage
magnitude.
The instrumentation amplifier has several
important characteristics that makc it suitable for this
application:
low offset voltage: 5GmV max
low drift: 0.25mVPC max
low input bias current: 2nA max
high common-mode rejection: 115dB min
input over-voltage protection: +40v
wide supply range: * 2 2 5 to *18V
low quiescent current: 3mA max.
Figure 3 Adjusting circuit
The INA114 is a low cost, general purpose
The thermocouple voltage is mostly instrumentation amplifier offering excellent accuracy.
proportional with the difference between the Its versatile 3-op amp design and small size make it
temperature of the hot junction and the cold junction. ideal for a wide range of applications.

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 26th International Spring Seminar on Electronics Technology
May 8 - 11,2003, Stare Lesna, Slovak Republic

A single external resistor sets any gain from 1 to The ADS1286 is a 12-bit, 2OHz analog-to-digital
10,000, Internal input protection can withstand up to converter with a differential input and sample and hold
MOV without damage. amplifier and consumes only 250+4 of supply current.
The ADS1286 offers an SPI and SSI compatible
The MA1 14 is laser trimmed for very low offset
voltage (SOpV), drift (0.25pVPC) and high common- serial interface for communications over a two or
mode three wire interface. The combination of a serial two
wire interface and micro power consumption makes
The gain for this amplifier is established using a the ADS1286 ideal for remote applications and for
precision resistance between pin 1 & 8. those requiring isolation.
In this case the gain is set to 263.15 to obtain 5V A PC controls the analog/digital converter
when the temperature is 4 0 0 T using a gain adjusting U6. The instrumentation ground is connected to digital
resistor of 190.72 ohm trimmed within 1.5% range. ground in the power supply proximity to avoid AC
The instrumentation amplifier needs a low pass coupling errors.
filter. The low pass filter is connected to pin 5 (REF). The PC supplies ad-ck, the analog/digital serial
This is the amplifier's ground reference but in this communication clock and ad-shdn, for low power
case an inverting active low pass filter uses the ground stand by. Also, U6 outputs the digital data at pin 6, by
reference to steepen low pass characteristic.
ad-data signal.
These three signals and other two that control the
input multiplexer are insulated from PC parallel port.
The output signal ad-data and its corespondent
ad-data-is0 is shown in fig.5.
For the other four signals that are inputs, the
schematic is quite the same, except the sense of data
flow.
+Wdig +Wpc

Q1
Figure 5 Low Pass Filter BSS1381SOT
sd dala 3 I
Cut off frequency is set to 1.57 Hz -
Power supply for this circuit is a very stable Figure 7 One bit Insulator
differential voltage +/-12V implemented using
conventionallow power linear voltage regulators. The data received from the acquisition board is
stored and displayed in an application that contains a
graphic user interface (GUI). A primary window
data an re!2 section is shown below.
-1 Ths

I I I

... 1
Figure 8 GUI window (b&w fragment)
Figure 6 Analog I Digital Converter

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 26th International Spring Seminar on Electronics Technology
May 8 - 1 1,2003, Stari LesnB, Slovak Republic

3. PHYSICAL
IMPLEMENTATION 4. CONCLUSIONS .

The entire system described above, including the This project is designed to he a low cost, easy to
power supply with AC transformer is built on a single use and an accurate tool for temperature measurement.
PCB.
It’s primary objective is the temperature
Because of this degree of integration, PCB measurement inside a reflow oven, but it can be used
implementation raises some difficulties. with similar results in other temperature measurement
areas.
Difficulties are around the fact that thermocouple
signal are very low and amplification is rather high. This project is a good practice for student teaching
On top of that it should be mentioned that the about using the CAD tools and SMT mounting
impedance of the thermocouple is quite significant equipments.
(around 2k Ohm).
The final product is useful to control the internal
Therefore thermocouple signals are very environment of reflow ovens. More measurement
vulnerable to Electro-Magnetic perturbations. In order points, more accurate information.
to reduce these perturbations to the minimum, it is
needed to shield these signals. At the PCB level this is
a possible using very large ground layer not only on 5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the intemal layers (where applicable), hut also on the
signal layers. The CETTI board supplies all resources for this
project
These ground planes are very useful in reducing
electric interference from the surrounding environment
and they shield very well weak signal routes from
interferences caused by power signals.
The PCB is implemented on a FR4 double sided
board 1 7 0 ” by 112mm, with 45’ comers.
The system is designed to fit inside an IP67 ABS
box. By using an IP67 box the system is protected
kom rapid temperature changes and the measurements
stay within the precision limit.
The method used to manufacture the PCB is the
substractive method for route insulation and and the
additive method for creating viases.
Almost all components are SMDs and are mounted
using CETTI’s equipments.

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