BGA soldering anybody?

[Shank]

Im looking into a project that involves BGA soldering. Im looking to find somebody who either knows how to and can do it for me, or someone who can tell me more information about it, recommend workstations, and help me get over the learning curve.

Wether you are selling me a fish or teaching me to fish, I appreciate it.

Do I need to get an IR station or will hot air work?
What equipment do I need?
Is it reliable or will I have a lot of defective units?
Can I do it myself or does it need to be professionally done?

 

[DaFletch01]

If u wanna go getto, I found this...
http://www.instructables.com/id/Toaster-Oven-Reflow-Soldering-BGA/

 

[DuHasst0]

I wouldn't call it ghetto... But with the right stuff you could turn a toaster oven into a reflow oven. You can also turn decent electric skillets into preheaters and user a hot air work station to heat your chips. Put it on a stand.

There are all kinds of references out there to get a reflow profile started that you can work with and fine tune to your needs.

Do you have any micro controllers?

 

[tyiphius]

I used to have a Scotle IR PRO v2
If your looking to do a single simple project its not worth it. Really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Since all chips have a certain amount heat they can take, you have to be careful with the machine you get. Many people make a "ghetto" rig using a griddle as the bottom heat and a reflow station as the top heat. Problem with reflow stations is that very rarely is the heat evened out in the heatgun, so even with the adapter piece covering the whole chip on you can still have uneven heat flow. (I know I tried) There are infared rework stations that used heat from a bulb and a heater from under. The bga reball station I had used dark infrared heating via ceramic plates.
I joined the military and sold my machine so its been a couple years since i've messed with any bga stuff, but head over to bgamods.com , many of the guys there are professionals and some are official resellers for reball stations

 

[bentomo]

Here's the rework station you can use for small jobs, I have one and it works just fine.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055B6NGE...110900&sr=1&keywords=soldering+rework+station

If you just need a simple reflow the device it works great.

I'd also recommend some kind of stencil for solder paste or a stencil for flux and solderballs to put on the bga.

BGA devices are just a bit complicated but they can be done by just heating the ic and ramping up to about 220c, and the only way to test them is to just turn them on.

Of course this also depends on the size of the ball grid. If you're doing a full size processor you will need to use an infrared rework station and solderball stencil.