gEDA-user: home made hot plate

[Dave N6NZ]

Seeing DJ's hot plate photo brought to mind a link I once saw, where a 
guy built a home-brew SMT hot plate.  I can't find the link, but as I 
recall, he used a few low-ohm high-watt power resistors epoxied to a 
piece of aluminum sheet.  He drove it with a 0-30V bench supply and 
controlled the temperature manually by varying the voltage.

Seems to me that one should be able to build a pretty good hot plate 
that way for not a lot of money.  Although I would think that copper 
might give more uniform heat spreading than aluminum (at much greater 
expense, however, unless you get lucky).  And a thermostatic temperature 
control shouldn't be hard.

-dave