Supplies & Costs
Circuit Board Production Costs
The cost of having the circuit boards manufactured is approximately $4 per student, plus a $20 shipping cost that gets split among all the students. With a minimum of 2 students, the manufacturing and shipping cost would be under $15 per person. With more people, it just gets cheaper.
PCB Parts Cost
The kit of parts required to populate each PCB will be supplied for each student. It is anticipated that the cost will be around $10.
Sparkfun Artemis Redboard Cost
The Redboard costs $20 from SparkFun.
Additional Supplies
Making a toaster oven reflow machine will require the student to purchase the following supplies. A lot of this stuff can be scrounged.
- Toaster Oven: should have 4 elements and a convection fan for even heating. Smaller, cheaper ovens will probably work too - they might just be slower.
- Suggested: Black&Decker 4 Element with Convection Fan
- Steel Quad box & cover plate
- Suggested: 4-inch quad box and steel cover plate
- GFCI receptacle
- Suggested: 20A GFCI Receptacle
- Power Switch
- Suggested: 20A Decora Switch
- Power cord and plug
- Suggested: 10 feet of 12/3 electrical cable, and a plug
- Solid State Relay and Heatsink
- Suggested: Generic 25A SSR/heatsink combo
- Thermocouple:
- suggested:
The total cost of everything including the board & shipping, parts, oven and all miscellaneous electrical bits will be around $150 if you buy everything brand new. The oven itself is the biggest cost if you want to scrounge one from somewhere. All in all, the total costs is not that huge if you consider the use you get out of it over the years.