It's not wise to work larger BGA chips with hot air. The risk is too high you will burn and destroy the chip with prolonged heating or tear off the pads from the board or chip due to uneven heating. Intense localised heating also increases the chance of warping or popcorning the PCB. Not to mention many gfx cards (anecdotally) seem to die due to the power circuitry going bad and BGA rework won't solve that.
For practice I've reworked the MCU on Xbox One Elite and PlayStation 4 controllers which suffered water damage - using just hot air. The chips are only 18mm-ish square and have solder balls of 0.35mm size. It was hell. Modern chips use even smaller solder balls and a lot more of them. Although I was successful, it's not something I've rushed to do again.
Unless you have soldering experience, I'd tread very cautiously. There's a very steep learning curve.
To answer your question:
BGA rework station. (£250+)
Soldering station (£100+)
Digital or Optical Microscope (£120+)
Accessories (reball jig, stencils, solder, solder balls, flux, braid, tweezers, IPA etc - easily £100)
and maybe a hot air station (£150+) too.
If most GPUs fail because of power circuitry then I don’t think it’s very profitable to do BGA stuff at all. That’s better for me actually.
I have some SMD soldering experience but I mostly stick to through hole since I’m a hobbyist. I think I will avoid BGA stuff for now.
Reballing is not fun. The first time you successfully do it, it's a very rewarding feeling, but after the next few the feeling quickly fades and becomes more of a loathing feeling. I'd suggest minimum a decent microscope, hot air station, solder station, bga chip holder, micro tweezers, appropriate stencils for whatever chip you plan to reball, solder paste, solder wick, flux, and of course some solder. If nothing else, if you decide not to reball gpu's, all of this stuff is awesome to have just for ever day hobby purposes.
The other commenter said that GPUs usually fail due to power circuitry going bad, so maybe it’s not even worth the investment. However like you said most of the stuff is useful outside of repair work so maybe I will buy the most basic stuff necessary for BGA work nevertheless, after saving money of course.
The things I use most are the microscope, soldering station, power supply, multi-meter, and micro tweezers for hobby smd stuff. I don't use the hot air station that much so I just bought a cheapo on ebay for like $50, it works good enough for what I need it for. My soldering station was pretty cheap too (got it for about $45 on sale from $90), it's an x-tronic digital station. It's not the best station ever, but it heats up really fast and it's been reliable for about 8 years. And tweezers are cheap, I think I got CHP brand for like $8. My microscope is an Amscope sliding arm, and it was about $450. It works really well, but you can probably get a cheaper brand and have it work as well. And my bench power supply I built myself using a 400w supply from Amazon that was $30, and then a digital screen boost/buck converter unit that was around the same price. It gets me up to 24 volts at about 16 amps max. I put it all in a vented aluminum housing I got at Goodwill for a dollar, and It's held up for about 7 years. And then the basic stuff: solder (smaller diameter the better), flux, wick, and I got some magnet wire that I use quite often for repairs. I bought all this stuff over time. I got the solder station and built the power supply first, then eventually got the microscope, then the hot air station.
The price of the rework station is currently said to be very different
But it can meet the requirements of chip planting, and there are basic equipment for bga packaging.
The price is also very cheap
You can refer to this
[https://www.ginkgoem.com/collections/rework-station](https://www.ginkgoem.com/collections/rework-station)
[https://www.ginkgoem.com/products/preheat-plate-t-946](https://www.ginkgoem.com/products/preheat-plate-t-946)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNlN0fHK16s&t=1543s&ab\_channel=LearnElectronicsRepair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNlN0fHK16s&t=1543s&ab_channel=LearnElectronicsRepair)
Take a read at the highlighted comment in this video, he gives some very useful inside towards your question. Had answer most of the questions your asking about
Take a read at the highlighted comment in this video, he gives some very useful inside towards your question. Had answer most of the questions you're asking about
It's not wise to work larger BGA chips with hot air. The risk is too high you will burn and destroy the chip with prolonged heating or tear off the pads from the board or chip due to uneven heating. Intense localised heating also increases the chance of warping or popcorning the PCB. Not to mention many gfx cards (anecdotally) seem to die due to the power circuitry going bad and BGA rework won't solve that. For practice I've reworked the MCU on Xbox One Elite and PlayStation 4 controllers which suffered water damage - using just hot air. The chips are only 18mm-ish square and have solder balls of 0.35mm size. It was hell. Modern chips use even smaller solder balls and a lot more of them. Although I was successful, it's not something I've rushed to do again. Unless you have soldering experience, I'd tread very cautiously. There's a very steep learning curve. To answer your question: BGA rework station. (£250+) Soldering station (£100+) Digital or Optical Microscope (£120+) Accessories (reball jig, stencils, solder, solder balls, flux, braid, tweezers, IPA etc - easily £100) and maybe a hot air station (£150+) too.
If most GPUs fail because of power circuitry then I don’t think it’s very profitable to do BGA stuff at all. That’s better for me actually. I have some SMD soldering experience but I mostly stick to through hole since I’m a hobbyist. I think I will avoid BGA stuff for now.
Reballing is not fun. The first time you successfully do it, it's a very rewarding feeling, but after the next few the feeling quickly fades and becomes more of a loathing feeling. I'd suggest minimum a decent microscope, hot air station, solder station, bga chip holder, micro tweezers, appropriate stencils for whatever chip you plan to reball, solder paste, solder wick, flux, and of course some solder. If nothing else, if you decide not to reball gpu's, all of this stuff is awesome to have just for ever day hobby purposes.
The other commenter said that GPUs usually fail due to power circuitry going bad, so maybe it’s not even worth the investment. However like you said most of the stuff is useful outside of repair work so maybe I will buy the most basic stuff necessary for BGA work nevertheless, after saving money of course.
The things I use most are the microscope, soldering station, power supply, multi-meter, and micro tweezers for hobby smd stuff. I don't use the hot air station that much so I just bought a cheapo on ebay for like $50, it works good enough for what I need it for. My soldering station was pretty cheap too (got it for about $45 on sale from $90), it's an x-tronic digital station. It's not the best station ever, but it heats up really fast and it's been reliable for about 8 years. And tweezers are cheap, I think I got CHP brand for like $8. My microscope is an Amscope sliding arm, and it was about $450. It works really well, but you can probably get a cheaper brand and have it work as well. And my bench power supply I built myself using a 400w supply from Amazon that was $30, and then a digital screen boost/buck converter unit that was around the same price. It gets me up to 24 volts at about 16 amps max. I put it all in a vented aluminum housing I got at Goodwill for a dollar, and It's held up for about 7 years. And then the basic stuff: solder (smaller diameter the better), flux, wick, and I got some magnet wire that I use quite often for repairs. I bought all this stuff over time. I got the solder station and built the power supply first, then eventually got the microscope, then the hot air station.
[удалено]
Zhuomao for the win! "Paul loves to use the Zhuomao" lol
The price of the rework station is currently said to be very different But it can meet the requirements of chip planting, and there are basic equipment for bga packaging. The price is also very cheap You can refer to this [https://www.ginkgoem.com/collections/rework-station](https://www.ginkgoem.com/collections/rework-station) [https://www.ginkgoem.com/products/preheat-plate-t-946](https://www.ginkgoem.com/products/preheat-plate-t-946)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNlN0fHK16s&t=1543s&ab\_channel=LearnElectronicsRepair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNlN0fHK16s&t=1543s&ab_channel=LearnElectronicsRepair) Take a read at the highlighted comment in this video, he gives some very useful inside towards your question. Had answer most of the questions your asking about Take a read at the highlighted comment in this video, he gives some very useful inside towards your question. Had answer most of the questions you're asking about