gEDA-user: home made hot plate

[Dan McMahill]

Dave N6NZ wrote:
> 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

and for you ex-mit folks, it makes that 6.302 thermal controller lab [1] 
seem all the more useful!

-Dan

[1] http://preview.tinyurl.com/2t98g8