Handsolder BGA - anyone tried ?

[lilltroll]

I found this example.

D3PTpaB4kro

Has anyone tried it out? It should be possible to do your own XMOS G series prototyping boards with a similar method.
(I heard that using vias at the ball-position is a no-no in production)

[otitov]

they recommend to run some tests and detect faulty joints. that looks quite tricky to me ;)

[leon_heller]

Vias are OK in BGA pads, but they must be plugged to avoid them wicking the solder. It's expensive, and is only done on very dense high-performance boards.

[shawn]

I may or perhaps could solder BGA SMT, unlikey till i have decent reflow station.
To save money it would be DIY as much as posible, till then is there any recomended
companys that do assemble at fair rates?

[lilltroll]

Vias are OK in BGA pads, but they must be plugged to avoid them wicking the solder. It's expensive, and is only done on very dense high-performance boards.

But if so it should be ok when you do BGA by hand as in the movie-clip, since you will fill all the vias with solder!?

[johanar]

Pretty cool that you can do it yourself, but I'd rather spend a few extra € on a finished board :)

[leon_heller]

ASK Technology is a company I have used for BGA assembly:

http://www.asktechnology.co.uk/

Their charges are very reasonable. They require a stencil, of course, and you need fiducials for the BGA part.

[shawn]

Thank you Leon, and I agree with Johanar that its a bit technical.
Stingent or not, Lilltoll's idea of using schmartboard|ez or something
contemporary to it makes a lot of sense. Xmos pricing model affords
DIYers a lot of opportunity, if good with SMT the savings are rather
substantial, especially if you want to throw around dozens of cores.
On another thread there was a discussion for building a re~flow oven
from a toaster oven, they are brave souls. Anyways I'll be paying
attention to those solder-gunslingers. I just might want to sling too.

[lilltroll]

In the city where I live, there is a company that mounts chips on PCB. They have a pasta-printer, so they do not need any stencils and they can place different amount of solderingpasta on different pads on the board. The problem anyway is that you can get a drilled PCB card from <50€, but cuircuit mounting takes much more human-time to prepare and you will probably need to rereel components, (Farnell can give you rereeling). The mounting robot need the components on different tapes or reels, and the robot needs to be programmed.

The machine places over 20 000 components/hour when working - generating a large cost to stop a production just to make a few prototype cards.

If you get over 20 smaller PCB-cards I heard that it is cheaper to program the robots compared to handsoldering (In Europe), if the company has specialised in smaller series. (Up to 5000 cards / Batch)

I guess you need to look for other solutions or companies that are specialised in prototyping.

Contacts to such companies are of high intrest.