Best low-ish cost PCB assembly house with BGA capability

[mrpackethead]

Why is everyone always so convinced double sided needs glue? It doesn't, glue is used when heavy components are on the bottom reflow side, or to hold surface mount parts in place when going through flow waver soldering.

Becuase they dont' know any better.

"A constant of approximately 0.0269 g/mm2 represented the
ratio at which a molten SAC305 solder joints failed to hold
a QFN on the bottom side of a PCB during reflow, as a
function of component mass versus total perimeter of wetted
surface. Applying a 20% failure buffer to this value
produced an average failure ratio of 0.0215"

http://www.circuitinsight.com/pdf/weight_limit_qfn_smta.pdf

[ddavidebor]

I have a board with a Zynq + DDR3 memory BGA devices that I'm looking to get prototyped.  Sadly, the prototyping costs so far have been eye-watering.  Almost £900 in the UK and ~$1200 USD from a US manufacturer, per board, and that is before the parts cost or PCB.

The board has two BGA devices, a couple of QFN devices, various TSSOP/QFN parts, and about 500 SMD passives 0402 - 1206 in size. It is a double sided load, made necessary by the FPGA/SoC decoupling.

I had thought about doing it in house, but this would be my first BGA layout, and the Zynq will be difficult to get right. At £60 per FPGA, too, it's not something I can really afford to throw away until it is right. Difficulty in inspecting the solder balls and determining if a fault is related to design or soldering is also a concern, so professional assembly here is attractive.

Input appreciated, especially from anyone who has had success with a given assembly house.

Try getting a quote from PCBWAY
They end up always being the cheaper / 2nd cheaper assembly in low quantities (I manufacture weird equipment in small batches).

[tom66]

JLCPCB quoted me ~£130 for 5 copies of a 6" x 7" 6-layer PCB.  Very impressive price.  I decided to go with 6 layers instead of 4 to give the DDR memory bus the greatest chance of working well.