Reballing questions.

[garyorner]

I am looking at a BGA Rework station. I am going to be doing more Console and laptop work then phone work. I am against reflowing as a computer tech shop. When these issues come into my shop I always send them to a place that can reball. As i feel Reflowing is just a temp fix that will just upset them later. But I send a lot of business out the door. I solder well. So my plan is to get the tools to reball. I have a solder station with heat gun but I want an infered machine. I have about 25 Red Ring Xbox 360 and about 15 Yellow light PS3. And maybe 15 or so GPU issue laptops. Now in theory we know it is the solder balls cracking that cause most of the issues. Before I work on anyones machine I want to have this down and I will work through all the machines I have untill I feel ready. BUT I have some questions for people that offer this service.

1) Do you use Direct heat stencils or the other?

2) Do you buy new chips or reuse the old chip? (I know if the chip is bad replace but moreso just asking to see if you just put new chip on)

I want to offer the best service I can. I really am sending about 5 to 6 jobs away a week. And this is growing. PS3s and Xbox 360 red rings being the worst.

I tried to search here and I found some info about reflowing and reballing but these two questions are not brought up. I come here because I read so often and the advice from the members is second to none.

Thank You

 

[Matthew Bradley]

A couple of things. First off, reballing consoles is a LOT harder to do than laptops. Laptop GPU's are much smaller and more forgiving when lifting the chip off the board. I did this on laptops for 5 or 6 years (using direct heat stencils) but had a horrible failure rate on consoles. Just something to consider. Your soldering skills won't mean much when reballing. It's almost surgical, involving patience and precision. We used both dark IR and hot air rework stations and just couldn't reliably lift those GPU's without damaging the pads on the board. Most would be fine but if just 1 out of 5 is bad, your losing money.

We used new GPU's only. I subscribe to the theory that these problems are more to do with the solder pads themselves and not necessarily the ROHS solder. The newer (redesigned) GPU's had larger ground planes which among other things, helped prevent the chips from warping at the pad level. If you ask 10 experts in this field, you'll get 10 different answers so I can only go off of experience.

The biggest thing here is - is it going to be worth your time? The reason you're seeing less and less shops do this type of work is the labor has remained the same while the costs of replacing boards has gone down. We stopped reballing DV series HP's when I could get the motherboard for cheaper than my labor. Consoles however are a different ballgame.

 

[garyorner]

Thank you for the great information. The consoles like you said would be the main source of work but if they are an issue to do and cost me money then it is not worth it. Thank you for sharing your experience. I have somethings to really think about now.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Have a look at the videos by Louis Rossmann for some additional good advice.

 

[garyorner]

His videos are very informative. Thank you for the link. I have been watching and listening to them all day while I work.