Author Topic: Recommendations for low-cost BGA removal/reball service?  (Read 1544 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline jaykTopic starter

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 76
  • Country: us
Recommendations for low-cost BGA removal/reball service?
« on: March 13, 2024, 04:53:20 pm »
I have a couple of board with some large FPGAs (~1K pins) I'd like to have removed and re-balled.  Can anyone recommend a vendor who could do this (preferably US-based, but could possibly send overseas)?  This is hobby stuff, so not looking to spend a fortune.
 

Offline CaptDon

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2098
  • Country: is
Re: Recommendations for low-cost BGA removal/reball service?
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2024, 02:19:57 pm »
Define your problem a bit more. Are you just harvesting some expensive or hard to get devices, or is your board failed and you want to reflow the old chips to make your board work again? Re-Balling of a chip with that many pads will probably be a waste of time at best. As Rocky used to say to Bullwinkle "That trick never works". Successful removal, re-balling and crude failure rate when reflowing the parts is probably money wasted unless the parts are valued at over $500.00 each. I have been down this road with contract manufacturers and financially the outcome is never positive nor is the reliability after 6 hard hot/cold thermal cycles in the chamber!! You end up shipping questionable junk to your customers and getting bitten in the ass (or fired) six months down the road of field failures when I stand in front of the engineering group and say "I told you this was a bad idea". Your only real option, and it'll cost, is to contact local 'board house' contract manufactures who are specialized in surface mount techniques. Anything less is 'less'.
Collector and repairer of vintage and not so vintage electronic gadgets and test equipment. What's the difference between a pizza and a musician? A pizza can feed a family of four!! Classically trained guitarist. Sound engineer.
 

Offline J-R

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1283
  • Country: us
Re: Recommendations for low-cost BGA removal/reball service?
« Reply #2 on: March 16, 2024, 05:41:50 am »
I've been watching this guy on Youtube for a while; seems legit: https://www.youtube.com/@northwestrepair
 

Offline Haenk

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1275
  • Country: de
Re: Recommendations for low-cost BGA removal/reball service?
« Reply #3 on: March 16, 2024, 10:00:40 am »
I've been watching this guy on Youtube for a while; seems legit: https://www.youtube.com/@northwestrepair

He could probably do it. But: reballing thousands of balls is certainly no fun and will take a long time; even more so if no masks are available.
lots of work * high skill level = very expensive, aka "fortune"
That would certainly only make sense if the FPGAs are in the multi-k-USD range - but then you will have nobody to who would buy them. How often can you reflow them? Twice? A commercial buyer will stay away as there is no documented history and uncertified rework - and a private buyer won't pay a lot of money.

Probably there is a reason why there are many cheapish-cards with FPGAs on ebay.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf