Replacing BGA components with hot air.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

think about what your going to be doing before buying stuff.

most times you dont need to reball anyway - just reflow with decent flux.

Wouldn't it just about always be better to completely reball than just reflow? I mean, there's really no way without an x-ray machine to see what's under the chip, right? No real way to see if there's solder bridges...I figured since I'm going to have the machine, just remove the chip that needs to be removed, clean the board, clean the chip, reball the chip, reattach the chip to the board. If that doesn't work, replace the chip.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for some lead-free no-clean flux for reballing?

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

think about what your going to be doing before buying stuff.

most times you dont need to reball anyway - just reflow with decent flux.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

I watched a video on the heat stencils. I mean, it seems like there's pros and cons to both type of stencils. With the heat stencils, I gotta line the stencil up exactly with the BGA component, but I don't have to worry about the balls moving out of place once it's lined up.

With the non-heat stencils, because everything's in a jig, it doesn't look like I have to worry about that. But I gotta remove the stencil before applying heat and the balls can get moved out of place...hrmm, which way do I go? Buy the heat stencils, buy the jig and the non-heat stencils?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

get the manual, so you can see how it works - i know nothing about the touch-interface.
my m8's one uses a pair of PLC's

I've read the manual. It's pretty useless. I guess there's a default password set, at the factory. That's not even included in the manual. It seems like it was written by someone who didn't really understand English very well. It's hard to follow in a lot of places and has Chinese (I think) with English.

The user manual looks more like a selling brochure. It lists all the features but doesn't really explain jack. Thankfully, there's video's online of people who figured it out. I couldn't find many English sites that talked about the unit so I used Google Translate. People were saying how they wished the manual went more in detail about how to use the touch screen interface. I agree, the manual on Scotle's website just doesn't really go into detail!

I bought the item though. It's a lot of money. It comes with a jig and some stencils for 360's, PS3's and some northbridge chips the guy says. I'm thinking of buying one of those 200 piece sets. A friend on here, who I've been communicating via private messaging, has been giving me a lot of help about the reballing process and answering all my questions.

From what I understand, there's two types of stencils. Hot ones and cold ones. If your chip isn't pre-balled, after cleaning it, etc, you put it in the jig and put flux on it. Then, with the cold type stencils, you put the stencil in the other half of the jig. You attach them and sprinkle your balls to fill the stencil. Then, very careful like, you remove the top part of the jig with the stencil and add heat to melt the balls.

I believe with the hot type of stencils, similar process, but you add heat while the stencil is still attached, if I'm understanding correctly. That way, you don't gotta worry so much about the balls moving out of place and all that jazz.

What do you guys think? Should I be looking for a giant set of heat type stencils? I think there's mainly two different sizes of stencils as well and the jigs aren't compatible with the two types. There's the 90mm jig that accepts the 90mm stencils and then there's some other size one. I'm going to try and find more information on this before I place any more orders.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

The bottom heat is used for warming the whole board to about 100c. It shouldn't be at the temperature where smd components are falling off.

There's two bottom heat sources though. The first is the infrared. The second is hot air that goes directly underneath the BGA component. The gentleman said the purpose of that bottom one is to apply a more uniform heat source to the BGA stuff so it doesn't cause warping.

I guess the temp can be controlled separately, I just hope I can make that bottom hot air the same temp as the bottom infrared sources for certain components. Thanks Diif.

[diif]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

The bottom heat is used for warming the whole board to about 100c. It shouldn't be at the temperature where smd components are falling off.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

get the manual, so you can see how it works - i know nothing about the touch-interface.
my m8's one uses a pair of PLC's

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

you can get those for $10 from china now for engine inspection etc.

btw, NASA is owned by the military / DOD so that explains the security.
they dont want spys finding images of any secret shit like x-planes,space assets etc.

Yeah, we figured they were bomb dogs but we thought for sure they'd be trained for drugs as well!

So, that Scotle HR-460C....you know how it has that bottom hot air heater? You thought that was a good idea, because it'd hit it from both ends, right?

What do you think though? I have some components that aren't BGA. They're SMD. I was going to use this for some of those type of components as well as BGA. But here's the thing, on the bottom side, there's SMD components directly under the SMD ICs. So, if I cannot turn off that bottom heater, I'd think those components would just melt right off. What do you think?

The Zeph got freaking sold on me. I was trying to get clarification from a guy on another site. He said something about my 600 watt preheater being enough to work with BGA equipment and me being able to use my WHA-900 to do BGA rework by hand. While I was waiting for clarification (to see if I misunderstood him), someone bought that freaking Zeph unit. I wanted that more than anything.

So now I'm going to probably buy the Scotle HR-460C. I just want to make sure I can turn off that bottom hot air heater (or keep the temp real low, like pre-heating temps).

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

you can get those for $10 from china now for engine inspection etc.

btw, NASA is owned by the military / DOD so that explains the security.
they dont want spys finding images of any secret shit like x-planes,space assets etc.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

They had an endoscopy unit they were auctioning off. I wanted that soooo bad but someone outbid me. I thought it'd be cool as hell to look down into my friend's stomachs. My friend Jason said if I bought it, he'd let me put it down his throat but we'd have to get him nice and drunk first. It went for a lot of money and I never got it.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

i'v heard about the NASA auctions - some guys on the SGI forum went and got a lot of computer gear.
several pallets of it.

Yeah, that's what we did. We drove a very long way, left at 9pm at night or so. Got there really early in the morning. It was crazy, we needed a pickup slip and figured we'd just stop at a library and print one. They hadn't sent the e-mail by the time we got down there! We had paid and everything. We waited a good two hours to get the e-mail. Then, when we started driving in, we saw the dogs and got scared. My friend was with me and he had some weed. The dogs were with armed guards who were going around the cars, like military folk. That scared us even more. I told me friend, if we back up, they're going to shoot us! What do we do? We took our chances. When it was our turn, the guys used these mirrors and stuck them under our car. They were on long sticks. I don't think the dogs were drug dogs, I think they were bomb dogs!!! I think they were looking for terrorists!!! The dogs didn't bark at all.

We got cool badges, I still got mine. We picked up our pallet, stopped at the store to buy some no-doze and then we drove all the way home. It was crazy fun.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

i'v heard about the NASA auctions - some guys on the SGI forum went and got a lot of computer gear.
several pallets of it.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

that zt btw either has a huge base like a pallet or has a very small pre-heat area.
what's with the pyramid obsession - are they masons?

I dunno, but they do seem to like pyramid shapes, don't they? They're supposed to be really good units, NASA uses them I believe. I went and picked up some stuff I bought off them once, down at the Langley Research Base. The stuff was all custom made, I believe in house. The soldering was really well done. It didn't look anything like what you get now when you get PCBs fabricated. Even the older stuff was really well done. The traces were this silverish colour and the boards looked a bit weird. I might have a couple still. If so, I'll post some pictures.

If I remember correctly, the components used were pretty good quality too, not cheap stuff.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

that zt btw either has a huge base like a pallet or has a very small pre-heat area.
what's with the pyramid obsession - are they masons?

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

you do need the right diameter to match the package.
but they arent that expensive for the achi/scotle - more like 40-70$ i think

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

If I'm reading this right, the Zephyrtronics ZT-7 nozzles are freaking 299$ a pop and the stencils are freaking 349$ a pop! If it was something like 299$ for every nozzle or 349$ for every stencil, then maybe, but at freaking 299$ a nozzle, I can't be paying that!

From what I've been reading, different BGA components need different nozzles with hot air. That's freaking insane man!!!!

http://www.zeph.com/nozzles_bga.htm

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

I think I might actually go for the Zephyrtronics if I can get the guy to answer my last question. Picture shows a stand. If it comes with the stand, I'm going to purchase it. He claims it all works. It's just really really cheap for a Zephyrtronics. When I looked into them before, they were really expensive. Although it's all hot air and no IR, I think they're worth it.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

that's nice,
it's similar to my m8's in that it has IR pre-heat and overhead hot-air AND hot-air under the chip.

triple-attack!

i really need to get my m8 to take a foto of the base of his so you can see the duct between the heating plates.

that unit does look nice - 4800w
although the European schuko plug in the foto is only rated at 10A (2200w) so i dont know what that's about unless it has 2 seperate cables - not impossible.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Man, this is such a tough decision! Now I'm thinking maybe the Zephyrtronics ZT-7 with the ZT-1 BGS Big Grid AirBath. This is harder than trying to pick out just the right parts to build a custom PC!

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Okay. Thanks Stj. Now I'm looking at the Scotle HR-460C. I like the camera part of it. Three zones but only the pre-heater is IR. The rest, from my understanding, is hot air. It has a touch screen display though and the price is right. I don't want to go any higher. But is the hot air going to work? It has a 7" touch screen display, a CCD high res camera. It has a special heater for the bottom of the board (for the BGA chip getting heated) along with the the top heater. Here's a link to it:
http://www.scotle.com//scotle-hr460c...l384_p147.html