Would this work....?

[Fazor]

My dad's hobby is fixing electronics for people. He needs a device that will heat up certain parts on a circuit board to test them and see if they fail. He said he'd want to heat them up to about 100 degrees or so.

Anyway, he wondered about a laser. Would this work?

Wondering what you guys think, and if so... I'm on the market for a laser and probably glasses for him if anyone has one for sale.

I'm assuming a cheap red burning one would work best right???

Thanks.

 

[Speedy78]

I think a heat gun would be more suited for something like this. You have much more control over the temperature and you dont need any glasses to do it.

 

[Fazor]

Thought about a heat gun, but it's too big. He wants to heat up small individual parts on the circuit board. Heat gun would heat the whole thing up.

 

[Speedy78]

To heat things up with the minimal amount of power a 405nm would probably be your best at 50mW or so. Should be ablw to focus it down to a small point and apply heat to most things without burning through it or melting it.

 

[Sigurthr]

A problem with using a laser to heat a component is there will be thermal stress from such a small section being heated as compared to overall heating of a component which is more natural. Glass bonded diodes would likely crack and fail from the thermal stress when in fact they would survive running at 75C higher if heated evenly.

Combine that with the reflective nature of electrical connections and you'll find lasers are not well suited to this. Look into a nozzle directed hot air rework station. They are temperature adjustable an can contain the heat to a very small footprint.

 

[Cyparagon]

Thought about a heat gun, but it's too big. He wants to heat up small individual parts on the circuit board.

ICs will respond to temperature changes like this. "small individual parts" do not. A heat gun is your best option. It will still allow targeting of a single IC. If you use a laser, you'll end up burning things more often than finding a failing chip.