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I was reading this post and came up with a wonderful, horrible idea. Can electronics survive in cooking oil?

Has anybody heard of using hot oil as a medium to transfer for the purpose of soldering/desoldering? It'll be a single uniform temperature that should be easy to control. Has anybody tried this? It could be new newest cheapest awful way for smd.

Emmanuel Lopez
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I reflow solder at home in a deep frier. Rather than oil I use galden ls 230, which is an inert fluid that boils at 230C. The board is placed above the fluid where the 230C vapor condenses onto the board, rapidly reflowing at exactly 230C.

It's a work in progress. I've adjusted the power with a TRIAC dimmer to try and get a nice, uniform and oxygen-free vapor column, but I'm still experimenting.

If you're interested take a look online at DIY vapor-phase reflow. I don't think oil would work though, both because the temperature would probably be off and it would be extremely hard to clean the boards afterwards.

user1850479
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    I wouldn't use that stuff, it's PFAS. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorinated_compound – Voltage Spike Aug 27 '23 at 23:07
  • @VoltageSpike Why specifically is that a concern? LD50 indicates negligible toxicity (many times more than used for soldering), and low vapor pressure/high density make it relatively easy to contain. Seems like a low risk substance compared to things like flux. – user1850479 Aug 28 '23 at 13:57
  • @user1850479 They're extremely stable *and* bio-accumulate. Even while not *that* toxic, they stick around and stay the same. – vidarlo Aug 28 '23 at 14:09
  • They don't really know what the consequences are, but a lot of PFAS are being banned. They do bioaccumulate and never go away because they are stable – Voltage Spike Aug 28 '23 at 14:37