Homebrew BGA reballing.

[Hellraiser1981]

I just wanted to see if anyone here has any personal experience reballing BGAs on Consoles and PC Motherboards.
I guess my inquiry has to do with the preheating equipment. I was contemplating between putting an arduino and relay in a toaster oven, or modifying an electric griddle with boltholes, standoffs etc.

I think the toaster oven would be great for drying and unwarping boards, but a griddle would offer much more open access to the board being reflowed/reballed and already has *decent* temperature regulation. I don't need both on my workbench. Any input is appreciated.

 

[Frick]

If you just want to reflow it shove it in the oven. Or are you talking about building boards with BGA's on them?

 

[Hellraiser1981]

Actually talking about 150C preheat for reflow/reballing. Plastic jacks, USB ports, 105C capacitors, battery holders do not hold up well in an oven at 230C.

 

[karolpl2004]

i tried it. bought me a reballing station from ebay for $50... all i can say is it takes a lot of patience.. i did my xbox 360, it took me a week..

 

[Hellraiser1981]

An update for everyone... I picked up a presto griddle and modified a harbor freight heat gun. I used a simple pci slot fan controller and a cooling fan out of an old xbox to replace the stock blower on the heat gun. Now I have a bottom preheater and a top reflow "wand". Just waiting on a 2000w thyristor-based voltage control from ebay.
Cost of griddle: free from roommate
Cost of Heat Gun : $12 from harbor freight +$5 for nozzles
Cost of voltage control: $5 from ebay
Thermometer with k-type thermocouple: $5 on ebay
Works great on laptop boards, but am struggling on playstation 3, just reworking a junk mobo for practice (system controller is bad, matched to cpu from what I have read)
The sony boards are really thick and dissipate alot of heat, was planning on reballing another console, but maybe a reflow for now(gotta get some kester 951) and some more practice.

 

[lauradogin]

good,I used a simple pci slot fan controller and a cooling fan out of an old xbox to replace the stock blower on the heat gun