Equipment requirements for the repair of BGA-boards

Abstract

During the production of high-value electronic boards it is often necessary to exchange BGAs within a repair process. The repair process generally is a manual process where the use of hot gas is common. FINETECH electronic GmbH of Berlin/Germany is developing and producing equipment for the assembly and the rework of PC-boards populated with high sophisticated ICs as well as flip chip devices. This equipment has to meet various requirements which is realized by having a modular concept. The base of the workstations is a patented vision alignment and placement principle which offers many advantages. Additionally, a new method to control the temperature of the hot gas was developed and introduced. Here the main patented idea is to control the temperature of the gas by mixing a hot and a cold gas stream instead of controlling the electrical power of a heating element for one single gas stream. Another key issue for a successful repair process is the design of the nozzles for the soldering and desoldering of the BGAs. All actual parameters of a specific repair or soldering cycle have to be protocolled and saved in order to reproduce each cycle at any time. Therefore, the human factor within a manual process is being suppressed to a minimum.