Replacing BGA components with hot air.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

exactly.

Good to go! Now, is it all powerful enough? I believe the hot air rework is around 650 watt. The preheater is 600 watt. I don't think the 600 watt is enough for the preheater. I was talking privately on here to one of my friends and he says some of these high end units have over 4kW total power (preheater and the top heater).

I wouldn't mind making a new preheater. 2,000 watt would be my goal. From my friends suggestion, I'd implement zones. Just figuring out how to do it, that's the trouble. Would I be able to use those control units you linked me to earlier? Or would I have to design a PID controller myself or use someone elses design? So many questions. I wish I could find a nice how-to that involved using those controllers you linked to Stj.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

you mean wiring, or programming?
wiring is in the pdf.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

you mean wiring, or programming?
wiring is in the pdf.

Both. I would think that programming would be already taken care of and built into the controllers, right? I'd still want to have some way of hooking it up to a PC to control / watch temps. So I'm sure there'd be some programming involved. After I'm done working on these two PCs, I'll study the PDF. I just glanced through the first pages. I'll read the whole thing and maybe I'll have a better understanding.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

well the controllers need a solid-state relay, for driving the heaters.
other than that, i think they can have a serial port.
(make sure you know the correct part number for the rs232 version.)

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

actually, if your using more than 1 you want the rs485 comms.

here is a software manual

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Thanks Stj! You've been more than helpful getting me going in the right direction. I'll keep you guys posted on how my progress goes. It might take a bit before I get to work on it though.

So, do you think the preheater would be large enough or should I work on building my own?

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

what's the surface area?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

If I have it on low, 120 mm x 60 mm
If I have it on high, 120 mm x 185 mm

It has a K-type thermocouple, the preheater I mean. No thermocouple connections for the hot air rework station.

[diif]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Looking at my rework station, the bottom plates are 600W and there are 4 of them.
Yours don't sound large enough to heat a whole board.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

no, that sounds very small, the ones i'm used to can heat a whole ps3 and then some.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Looking at my rework station, the bottom plates are 600W and there are 4 of them.
Yours don't sound large enough to heat a whole board.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. So it looks like I'm back at trying to find some plans on how to build a nice large 2,000 watt preheater. They do make a bigger preheater, the only problem is it runs off 240, not 120VAC. In my house, it'd be a bit of a challenge to get 240VAC in that room. We'd have to run new wire from the breaker box. The wire that's in the walls isn't even that good. 14-2 I think. We have a lot of 20AMP breakers in there. I wanted to put a higher amperage breaker in for the work room. I have some stuff that could probably benefit for it. I'm afraid to have everything turned on at once. I talked to some electrician to see if it was possible, but he said because of the gauge of the wire we had, we couldn't go any larger without replacing the wire in the walls.

I'm not sure if it's 14-2 or not. I just remember him saying some number like that.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

energy is energy,
you will need to run a wire either way because if you want 110v your gonna be pulling serious amps.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

energy is energy,
you will need to run a wire either way because if you want 110v your gonna be pulling serious amps.

So there's no way to get 2,000 watt with 110v? I'm going to have to tear down sheet rock and run directly from the box? That really sucks. We're not going to be here much longer either. We have a baby coming and my wife is working on becoming store manager at her work. That involves going through every mangers position first though. Only one left after this one is Assistant Store Manager. The only stores in the chain that have that position are stores that make 1.6 million in sales a year or more. Her store doesn't. They said only stores in bigger cities make that kind of cash. She said she's gonna wait until the babies born and then we're going to have to relocate to a <gulp> big city.

[stj]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

i didnt say that, but isnt 2kw at 110v 16Amps?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Yeah. Here, we have 120v from the AC outlets. So 16.66667 amps. We can say 17 amps, plus the 650 watt hot air ~ 5 amps. So now we're at 22 amp. My brain was broke yesterday so I didn't think about just calculating it. With a 20 amp breaker, I think it'll trip. Also, there's more than just the device that will be running off that. Lights, maybe a PC, etc. I could turn off all the devices to not trip a breaker.

I noticed there was a 30 amp and some double 50 amp breakers in the breaker box. 30 amp requires at least 10 gauge (it's copper). 20 amp breakers, from what I was reading, requires at least 12 gauge. It'd be nice if there was 10 gauge in there. Then I could just replace the breaker with a 30 amp and we'd be all set.

I could also probably go with a lesser wattage preheater.

[ZnsaneRyder]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

I see guys on youtube doing it with a hot airgun, and tapping it in place with tweezers, which is crude, but they did it! It would be too hard for me to hold the chip still for BGA!

I replace eeprom chips and gamma chips with a hot air gun, and those are difficult as it is, but I have become good at replacing them, but BGA replacement is not something I have tackled yet!

[diif]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Did you see this yesterday Spork ? http://hackaday.com/2016/04/05/ir-rework-station/

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

I see guys on youtube doing it with a hot airgun, and tapping it in place with tweezers, which is crude, but they did it! It would be too hard for me to hold the chip still for BGA!

I replace eeprom chips and gamma chips with a hot air gun, and those are difficult as it is, but I have become good at replacing them, but BGA replacement is not something I have tackled yet!

I'm not sure what a gamma chip is. But for BGA components, I believe with profiles, it won't hold. A profile works like this. Let's say we have a BGA chip and we're all ready to plop it in and have it soldered to the board. We prep the board, remove the old solder, get the balls setup properly, etc. We put the chip on. Instead of just putting heat on it until the balls melt, we need to put heat on it just right. It might be something like:
pre-heater the board to 300F. Increase the temp on the BGA to 500F at a ramp speed of 1-2 degrees F per second. Once it reaches 500F, hold it there for 2 minutes. Then, ramp up the temp to 650F. Hold it there for 30 seconds. Then, take it down to 400F for 2 minutes, 300F for 30 seconds, etc.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Did you see this yesterday Spork ? http://hackaday.com/2016/04/05/ir-rework-station/

That is cool, thank you Diif! I wanted to avoid the Arduino if I could and just design my own hardware, but hell, if it gets the job done, until I get something better, I think that'll work. Maybe instead of the halogen bulbs, I can use some of those IR heating elements or whatever they are. They're rectangle in shape.

[newtothis]

Re: Replacing BGA components with hot air.

Some info I am seeing which isn't right in here :

Non leaded solder will melt at ~217c not 230 - 240c < Quite frankly that would most likely tear the BGA pads off the board on the lift.

Leaded solder will melt at ~183 - 188c

Profiling is really important as stated... Do things wrong and you can easily lift pads, popcorn the BGA device, Warp the board or simply kill the device.

You need enough power to equally heat the entire board evenly within a specified time... Just the same as being able to get the device to the correct temps in the right amount of time.

There is a lot going on and a lot to learn when doing this kind of work... I killed many devices and boards learning and figuring profiles. Where one profile may work for one board it will not work for another... Just as one profile may work for a PS3 for one person it will not work for another using the same machine in a different climate. Ambient temps and even humidity all play a big role in getting profiles right.

Simply put BGA rework is not something that you can just jump into and expect to get right quickly.