I was having a bunch of trouble soldering drivers with heatsink pads on the underside. The combination of inaccessible pads and a large heatsinking area of copper combined to make it difficult to reflow the solder paste. About a year or so ago I picked up a cheap board preheater but didn’t do much with it. I was mainly hoping it would work as a small IR reflow plate, but it doesn’t quite generate enough heat for that.
However, it works really well for its intended purpose. Preheating the board and components before hot-air reflow allows the solder paste under large components to come up to temperature and results in a beautifully soldered part.
Thumbs up on these cheap little preheater plates.
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