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I know there are folk who are not comfortable jumping in to SMT. I would encourage you to try it, starting with just 1206 resistors. It's actually less trouble than you think - the values are written in plain English on the parts so no need to work out colour codes and there are no leads to bend to the right shape and no leads to cut off afterwards. There's usually less flux to clean up too as you'll often be using less solder. It allows for better PCB routing, even when hybrid (SMT parts mixed with through-hole parts).
That's entirely possible. I haven't pimped my oven in any away. It's a stock Black & Decker model.
Last I needed to prototype a circuit, I asked my assembly house if they could assemble a panel (six boards) for me. They charged the same per board as for the subsequent 120 boards I had made. If they keep doing that I can see that toaster oven being kicked to the curb pretty soon here.
If I can get the oven hot enough to reflow lead-free solder reliably, I would probably move to one of the more DIY-friendly alloys such as the germanium or bismuth doped Sn/Cu alloys. 99.3/0.7 Sn/Cu with germanium is wonderful to work with - at least that's my experience with wire solder in that alloy.
Tom
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I agree. SMD is less messy in many ways. It's also faster to assemble once you get the hang of it. And you get to use modern parts that offer the best performance.
For larger circuits I would still recommend a reflow oven, though. It is so satisfying to just plop the components into the solder paste, stuff the board in the EZ-bake oven, and have a working circuit a few minutes later.
Not thereby said that hobbies should be optimized for speed, but my back certainly thanks me for not spending hours and hours soldering.
Tom
