I just did my first reflow.

[ouimetnick]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

I had to reflow the dreaded Nvidia 8600Mgt on a MacBook Pro Early 2008.

I did it about 1 year and a half ago. I took it apart, and put the logic board in my oven (yum) set it at 400F for 8 minutes. Still works fine now. I don't like the heat gun method, as stated, it tends to warp boards. The baking method bakes the entire board.

[xboxhaxorz]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

im late, but i did reply lol

[Peter9DO]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

@xboxhaxorz please do me a favor! Check out this post I put up the other day, leave a comment if you feel compelled. The link is below:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=22823

[xboxhaxorz]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

The reason devices fail is because of lead free solder and heat fluctuations
Lead solder is just generally stronger, with the new law companies had to REDO their profiles and processes and there is a lot less room for error in manufacturing due to the high temperatures which are very close to the peak temps of a bga package

If you had bought a 360 or PS3 at launch and left it on forever, it would never die
When you turn it off and on, it goes from cold to hot and eventually cracks the solder

The GPU fluctuates very much since it renders images and sometimes doesnt do a lot of work, the CPU is pretty much always at max in game consoles which is why it does not fail nearly as much as a GPU chip, its not because the CPU is a more powerful chip or stronger chip its simply that the solder joints dont crack as much

The way to put flux under a bga is to heat up the board, and then apply it with a syringe the flux will be sucked underneath the bga

Liquid flux is not going to work as it burns off well before peak temps, gel flux tends to last alot longer, and this is important as when the solder is liquiified oxidation has a chance to enter the solder joints and if the flux is still active at that point then oxidation is less probable to occur

kingbo flux is the type i use and it remains active to 245c in reworking

using anything besides a rework station just wont suffice and can never be compared
consistent controlled heat is needed in reworking

a heat gun causes thermal shock and its inconsistent as well the pcb needs to be preheated to around 200c so as not to have a huge difference in temperature

those who use smt stations, griddles etc; can provide the preheat however usually they wont take the board to more than 140c and at that point you cant focus the heat underneath the bga due to the preheater being a giant hot plate so when applying the rest of the heat on top of the bga you will cause popcorning or delamination if there was moisture trapped due to not being able to preheat properly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3QLYkfPDBg

this is a nitrogen capable machine, when using nitrogen flux is not needed as the primary goal of flux is to remove oxidation, in a nitrogen environment there is no oxygen only nitrogen duh so oxidation can not really occur

[Spork Schivago]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

...On the note of optical disc drives, my Xbox 1.4 has a Samsung, and it has trouble ejecting and accepting discs half of the time for whatever reason but once it accepts a disc it works just fine.

I was working on my friends 360 not too long ago. I was added new thermal paste. Anyway, his drive did the same. This is what I did to fix it. I turned the 360 on, hit the eject button on the drive, unplugged the power to the 360, removed the drive, opened up the drive and then replaced the belt on the motor (it was on the motor that's closest to the drive tray). When you say Xbox, I don't know if you mean the original Xbox or the 360. I'm not a gamer or anything. I'd imagine if it's an original Xbox, it'd probably still be an old warn out belt needing replacement. Just my two cents.

[Wester547]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

360 are terrible, I have one. What were they thinking of using 92mm case fan on the back.

The first 360s had two 70mm fans in the back - and the new ones, one 92mm inside - all from Delta - but yes - the Falcon 360s (one of which I still have) and before were notoriously hot (75C+, with Jasper lowering temperatures to 60C, and the ones after even lower, 45-50C+ if I'm not mistaken). When you triple room temperature, back and forth, constantly, it's no wonder that you have an incessant amount of 360s coming in for reflowing. I don't know how my Xbox 360 Falcon is still alive after 2+ years of use but I know it's only any day now until it's stop working because of such huge temperature shifts + lead-free solder.

I don't know how cool the first Xbox ran but I do know I feel warm air from its 70mm Sunon Maglev fan mounted in the back after a while, but note in my version that's the only fan in the console and the rest is passively cooled (heatsinks). Probably for better - the very first Xboxes before that did have two fans but one of them was a small (45x8) ADDA hyprobearing fan for the GPU (), and the one in the back was either a Nidec sleeve bearing or a NMB dual ball bearing. On the note of optical disc drives, my Xbox 1.4 has a Samsung, and it has trouble ejecting and accepting discs half of the time for whatever reason but once it accepts a disc it works just fine.

[JuniperSprouts]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

Sony would argue it's in response to consumers wanting a "quieter console" and since that aligns with their goal of selling more consoles they're more than happy to oblige.

I like that! Dead consoles are quiet consoles! Haha!


By the way, congratulations on popping the reflow cherry! My first attempt was unsuccessful. My second was successful. I do not play videogames, but I like offering to fix things for my friends & family. The second attempt (1st successful) was followed by completely transferring the PS3 innards to a Micro-ATX PC case & Frankensteining the motherboard with "overkill" heatsinks & airflow. Has been running for 4/5 years...

[polychromeuganda]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

Unleaded solder is brittle but
Leaded solder is too flexible...

The caveat of using unleaded solder remains...
When manufacturers skimp on the copper in the unleaded solder, it is not as good as leaded solder.

The question is, why force companies like Acer who want to profit off relatively well designed and inexpensive items to use a product which is far more expensive? They end up using inferior unleaded solder and their consumers suffer because of this.

That's why we should just stick to leaded solder.

This explanation is interesting... but not quite right.

1) The cost of the solder itself is trivial compared to the components, the PWB, etc. It less than the cardoard box. Its less than the unintelligible manual. The choice of solders is driven by regulatory compliance. If you want to blame someone, blame office holders unable to resist banning lead they know about in electronic solder while being criticized for failing to ban lead they didn't know about in paint and childen's toys.

2) re: copper - You are referring to 95/3.5/.9 Sn/Ag/Cu solder vs 95/3.5/.7 Sn/Ag/Cu solder, but this is only for hitting the eutectic points for better melting and flow while soldering, which improves initial yeaild at the factory and reduces re-work of defective joints. It doesn't help resist metal grain formation and grain boundary seperation (cracking) of thermally cycled joints under mechanical stress.

3) re: lead is softer. Yes, slightly, but that isn't the point. 60/40 Sn/Pb has a tendency to self anneal (re-mix) rather than seperate into single metal crystals and crack on the grain boundaries. 63/37/2 Sn/Pb/Ag holds up better to thermal cycling with stresses than 60/40 Sn/Pb. As a bulk material strength peaks around 4% Ag (or Au). At the contact surface there is an intermetallic compound formed when a little of whatever was being soldered (Cu, Al, Ag, Au, etc. ) dissolves into the solder.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

I thought it couldn't get any worse after the PS2 / X-box dead DVD drives and lasers fiasco. Those were pretty easy money.

But I was wrong . It just got worse.

Personally I think I'm done with consoles been playing a lot more games on the PC lately anyway.

Got 6 120mm fans in this puppy and a huge passive heatsink on the video card with a 120mm fan on the side of the case blowing cool air over it it's NEVER going to overheat .

I've never been a huge console guy, PC gaming was my thing. But these days gaming is just getting stupid nothing more then milking my wallet for content.

My EVGA GTX 260 core 216 gets as high as 95*C with fans at 40% and does not throttle up the fan with the evga bios. But I had the card for 3 years had no way to automatically throttle them. So if it was going to die, it would be now. With the new speedfan 4.46, I can set a profile to throttle my graphics card fans up when they hit certain temps. When they hit 55*C, fans go to 45%, when they hit 60, fans go to 50%, when they hit 65, fans go to 60%, when they hit 70 fans go to 75% when they hit 80, fans go to 100%.

I've bought several evga cards and they all run hot, idle at 65*C, but none of them have die yet. So If I had to say, EVGA knows how to build them.

[Krankshaft]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

just... FUCK CONSOLES!

Yeah I've found that statistically reballs are more reliable than reflows and yes the sad thing is there are alot of scammers posting pics of fancy equipment when they just have a heatgun or even worse perform a clamp mod.

I thought it couldn't get any worse after the PS2 / X-box dead DVD drives and lasers fiasco. Those were pretty easy money.

But I was wrong . It just way worse.

Personally I think I'm done with consoles been playing a lot more games on the PC lately anyway.

Got 6 120mm fans in this puppy and a huge passive heatsink on the video card with a 120mm fan on the side of the case blowing cool air over it it's NEVER going to overheat .

[Mad_Professor]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

Sorry I was talking about Xbox 360s in that specific instance PS3s as you said are another story.

Sony would argue it's in response to consumers wanting a "quieter console" and since that aligns with their goal of selling more consoles they're more than happy to oblige.

Reflowing eliminates the solder crystals when the balls reach a molten state.

Solder crystals are formed at an accelerated rate when the joints are held at high temperatures for extended periods. The underside of a BGA has the perfect conditions for them to form.

You can't eliminate them only thing you can do is keep the heatsink clean keep and keep an eye out for dryed out heatsink paste. In other words keep the BGA as cool as possible. This will reduce their formation.

360 are terrible, I have one. What were they thinking of using 92mm case fan on the back.

Another thing is ps3 CPU/GPU hang upside down so gravity is adding to that problem.

So re-flowing is basically chancing it.

Reball is the only solution, and finding someone who actually does a true reball and not being a fake doing what I did with a heatgun and taking money for it.
Even if you get it reball, you have to change out the clamps and install a fan controller and bring the fan speed up.

just... FUCK CONSOLES!

[Krankshaft]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

Sorry I was talking about Xbox 360s in that specific instance PS3s as you said are another story.

Sony would argue it's in response to consumers wanting a "quieter console" and since that aligns with their goal of selling more consoles they're more than happy to oblige.

Reflowing eliminates the solder crystals when the balls reach a molten state.

Solder crystals are formed at an accelerated rate when the joints are held at high temperatures for extended periods. The underside of a BGA has the perfect conditions for them to form.

You can't eliminate them completely the only thing you can do is keep the heatsink clean (maintain good airflow) and keep an eye out for dried up thermal paste (poor dissipation from the die to the heatsink). In other words keep the BGA as cool as possible. This will reduce their formation drastically. A very good thermal paste I use is Arctic Silver 5.

Don't use the cheap white stuff that's for passively cooled semiconductors (voltage regulators, FETS, etc). I've seen many x-clamp modded consoles (said to be "refurbished" by a game store) with that white bird crap on them.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

There are plenty of servicers out there who will reball with the proper equipment for the cost of a game with return shipping without the negative effects of damaging the board from any subsequent repairs. Reflows run about 40 bucks how much did that heatgun cost 30 at least?

I've yet to have a leaded GPU reball come back to me.

The reason the BGAs fail is because of dust infiltration dust plugs up the GPU heatsinks and since the end users don't open their consoles to clean them out the consoles run hot thermally stress the BGA solder balls and cause them to crack. It's not the consoles problem it's the users problem.

$15, and some luck. You explain on the process of the reflow but you don't say how the faults are corrected? Wouldn't the solder crystallization come back after time?

I modified my fan with 555 PWM controller, plenty of air flow, but loud. The problem on why so many PS3 are failing is not because of clogged vents or inadequate heat dissipation, which if you look at the PS3 Fatties, their heatsinks are massive with heatpipes and using an aluminum metal i/o shield with a riser with 1/4" wide spacing slots for vents with a 6" fan. How could this console overheat. It's Sony's debilitate attempt to reduce "Fan Noise" by slowing the fan down. If you look at all the firmware updates most of them keep adjusting the fan to lower speed. Some 1% others 10% it's ridiculous. It's almost as if they are trying to sabotage their consoles to force consumers to buy new ones.

What's fucked up is that the fan does not throttle up when a user is playing a game.

Frankly you're right, heat is the problem with most consoles, small form factor and poor cooling and crappy unleaded solder = death on a silver platter.

[Krankshaft]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

There are plenty of servicers out there who will reball with the proper equipment for the cost of a game 60 with return shipping without the negative effects of damaging the board and sending it to an early grave. Reflows run about 40 bucks how much did that heatgun cost 25-30 at least?

I've yet to have a leaded GPU reball come back to me with the one stipulation that the consoles heatsinks were cleaned on a regular basis. Depending on use once a year or once every 6 months with heavy use.

The reason the BGA joints fail is because of dust infiltration dust plugs up the GPU heatsink and since end users don't open their consoles to clean them out (nor does the manufacturer recommend it so they can sell more consoles) the consoles GPU runs hot.

The fans compensate by running at a higher speed dust keeps plugging up the fins until even the fans running at full speed isn't enough to keep the GPU cool the high heat then thermally stresses the BGA solder balls causing crystals to form which causes them to eventually crack.

The reason why these people are saying reballs aren't reliable is because they have no clue why the joints failed to begin with.

Whenever you repair ANYTHING you must figure out what prompted the failure in the first place or your repair too is destined for a subsequent failure.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

Reflowing with a heat gun will do more damage to the board than good.

It's just as improper and damaging to the board as the X-clamp washers and bolts on the 360 consoles and achieves the same result severe board warpage.

The board and the BGA are probably warped now.

The proper way to do this is with a temperature regulated rework station and a board preheater or a BGA welder (which has an IR regulated heat gun and a preheater built in). By preheating the entire board it minimizes warping and requires less heat to be applied from the top with a hot air gun. Also I don't mean preheat in an oven or on a presto griddle with a proper regulated preheater.

Not to mention when hot air reworking you use a nozzle that disperses the heat evenly over the entire BGA if you're using a hot air station it also must be mounted on a stand so the distance from the edge of the nozzle to the board is kept even from the board (the reflow process usually takes at least 15 minutes). Far from the "move the heatgun in circles" which you no doubt read on some site. You must get all of the balls to reach their molten state evenly and you're not going to do that with unregulated and uneven heat.

You also place thermocouples 1mm away from the edge on 2 sides of the BGA to verify when your board preheaters heat has penetrated to the top of the board, to dial in your temperature regulated station to the proper temperature, and to make sure you've reached the molten state on both sides and that the heat is even. I won't bore you with thermal profiles which is basically how you slowly bring the board up to temp with the preheater and rework gun and slowly cool it to get sound solder joints and to reduce thermal stress on the PCB.

An unregulated heatgun is just as dangerous and ineffective as towel tricking the console (blocking the exhaust ports and overheating the board) and just as ineffective for solving the issue in the long term.

Most likely you didn't achieve full re flow you may have partially melted the balls which only broke up some of the solder crystallization that caused the solder ball fracture the fault will return. These types of repairs are very short lived and each time it's repeated the subsequent repair will be shorter lived.

Please use your heat gun for what it was designed for melting heatshrink, bending thin plastic, stripping paint, etc.

Sorry but I had to set the record straight I'm tired of this misinformation that's sending perfectly good boards to the scrap heap. It's not your fault there are just too many people spreading this misinformation and not enough people posting the right info.

Not everyone has the equipment and must make-do with what they have.

Frankly it's not going to matter since reflow and reball have not proven effective in fixing these faults. Therefore the same amount of scrap still remains.

[Krankshaft]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

how do you get flux all under the chip? thats not very much space between the chip and the board, i'm assuming you use some non-dense liquid flux

They usually use a syringe aim it under the BGA and keep squirting till it comes out the other side.

[Krankshaft]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

Reflowing with a heat gun will do more damage to the board than good.

It's just as improper and damaging to the board as the X-clamp washers and bolts on the 360 consoles and achieves the same result severe board warpage.

The board and the BGA are probably warped now.

The proper way to do this is with a temperature regulated rework station and a board preheater or a BGA welder (which has an IR regulated heat gun and a preheater built in). By preheating the entire board it minimizes warping and requires less heat to be applied from the top with a hot air gun. Also I don't mean preheat in an oven or on a presto griddle with a proper regulated preheater.

Not to mention when hot air reworking you use a nozzle that disperses the heat evenly over the entire BGA if you're using a hot air station it also must be mounted on a stand so the distance from the edge of the nozzle to the board is kept even from the board (the reflow process usually takes at least 15 minutes). Far from the "move the heatgun in circles" which you no doubt read on some site. You must get all of the balls to reach their molten state evenly and you're not going to do that with unregulated and uneven heat.

You also place thermocouples 1mm away from the edge on 2 sides of the BGA to verify when your board preheaters heat has penetrated to the top of the board, to dial in your temperature regulated station to the proper temperature, and to make sure you've reached the molten state on both sides and that the heat is even. I won't bore you with thermal profiles which is basically how you slowly bring the board up to temp with the preheater and rework gun and slowly cool it to get sound solder joints and to reduce thermal stress on the PCB.

An unregulated heatgun is just as dangerous and ineffective as towel tricking the console (blocking the exhaust ports and overheating the board) and just as ineffective for solving the issue in the long term.

Most likely you didn't achieve full re flow you may have partially melted the balls which only broke up some of the solder crystallization that caused the solder ball fracture the fault will return. These types of repairs are very short lived and each time it's repeated the subsequent repair will be shorter lived.

Please use your heat gun for what it was designed for melting heatshrink, bending thin plastic, stripping paint, etc.

Sorry but I had to set the record straight I'm tired of this misinformation that's sending perfectly good boards to the scrap heap. It's not your fault there are just too many people spreading this misinformation and not enough people posting the right info.

[Uranium-235]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

how do you get flux all under the chip? thats not very much space between the chip and the board, i'm assuming you use some non-dense liquid flux

[Mad_Professor]

Re: I just did my first reflow.



Playstation 3 died last night, My sister tried to use it, but it wouldn't turn on. It went from green to lime green then to blinking red light and beeps three times.

I'm surprise it lasted as long as it did with the moderate use like playing infamous, fight night, ghost recon, and watching netflix.

Might try to reflowing it again someday when I'm bored.

[moola]

Re: I just did my first reflow.

Well, I'm glad you managed to reflow it properly.