Currently looking into replacing our current soldering setup with infrared soldering station. This should be more efficient, and also would help us deal with BGA chips/processors.

Anyone have any recommendations on which ones are best, or more efficient for DR?

what is your current setup? have you tried the Kakko type hot air with nozzles?

Hakko?
They make good quality tools. Not sure of their IR units, but their soldering tools are very good, especially for the price. When I move to IR, I'll get the cheapest unit I can find on Ebay. Then, it will either work fine for me, or I'll know exactly what I need and want with a better brand. I hate making expensive mistakes.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0283743213

For IR, Metcal is THE choice.

if you want to use them for bga chips your better of with infra red
for anytime bga chips

hot air nozzles does not work that great or at all and can damage the ics

the pro way is infra red


would this be ideal for logic boards guys

and possible laptop circuit boards

end of the day how many times do you think your use something like this for
hard drives???????

T862 IRDA Welder Infrared Heating Rework Station

not many times u know the most cases with ic´s damaged are SMD¨S

Regards

Few bgas in hdds... Also reballing is another problem... Ugh!

you dont need to reballing all you need is some solder and go over the connections
reballing kits are not really needed

most hard drives we seen have bgas and it sucks when you got to change them

One of the big problems with BGA (and some QFP) devices is that there is often a big solder pad on the underside of the chip that is very very difficult to desolder, even with IR at max temperature. On top of that, the chips are sometimes adhered to the board first using a very strong adhesive. It almost like the manufacturers are conspiring against us.

<itch>

I agree. There's a solution, anyway.

What drives are you seeing BGA's on? I don't think I've seen any yet, but I may not have been paying attention.

For BGA's on notebooks, I just use a heat gun. Seems to fix any small cracks.

ibm deskstar

most hard drives are bga these days.