Help with IR6500 rework station

[petemanuk]

Hi,

I been playing with a recently acquired IR6500 rework station and watching lots of YouTube tutorials to see how to use it with not much success. I’ve only recently joined badcaps but going through the forums there is a lot of knowledge here, so though it best is if I ask my question here.

1. Firstly is the IR6500 any good for BGA rework or should I be spending my money on a better one.

2. The instruction manual is pretty useless on explaining how to set the PID loops (no information at all!!) both top and bottom heater for th Kp, Ki and Kd values. Any tips on where I could find information on this especially the PC410, I know how to set the profile (temp rise rate, temp, dwell etc..) but not the PID loop, same goes for the bottom controller.

3. When watching various tutorial some mention soaking the board at 150degC for a period of time before running the main profile. I tried this only to find several Electrolytic caps poped as their rated temp is only 105degC, this is after I’d screened them with capton tape. Based on that should I remove all the caps or should I just soak the board at a lower temperature?

4. When I look at both the top and bottom IR heaters through a thermal imager the heat distribution is so uneven across the elements (hot spots in different locations), it is causing uneven heating of the rework part. I recently tried to remove a LGA1151 cpu socket and found using the thermal imager the socket was around 50degC hotter on one side due to these element hot spots, which caused board damage as when the colder side eventually heated up the hotter side it cooked the board (pop-corned it). Is their any thing I can do to make the heat distribution across my heating elements more even.

Any help on the above would be much appreciated.

Thanks