I wonder about Louis sometimes especially when he starts intimate conversations with the board he is repairing ;) I guess that's his anti stress method of repair as he seems always to be thinking at warp speed overclocking his mental faculties.
You made the reballing look easy, today I spent over an hour trying to do exactly the same thing... and got nowhere, each time I got a bit better though, on the last time I actually got the chip off the stencil, but was missing a few balls and some were uneven in size, cleaned it off ready to try again tomorrow... I’ve never done bga before so it’s a hell of a learning curve.
It's all good practice. Since you've not done reballing before then it's not a fair comparison with what I did here, since at least I'd already done plenty of reballing jobs, just never an SMC one. After a while that brain/hand/eye coordination should develop nicely in conjunction of knowing your hot air machine's behaviour too. Uneven balls can be tolerated within a certain range, so don't fret too much if there's one fractionally larger/smaller, so long as they all make contact with the pads and don't touch each other :D Best of luck!
Nice job Paul!!! And everybody has their different ways of doing things. And there is no perfect way. Whatever works for you. But I used to use paste, but it was too messy for me, and also has balls joining together, and that sent me a bit crazy. Now I use a 80mm reball clamp/jig, with the 980 stencil (that fits a 80mm clamp) I clamp the smc in the clamp. Clean it up, brush on a thin coat of flux. Put stencil over the top. Then I roll-on 0.4mm leaded solder balls. Each ball finds its hole. Remove any excess balls a tiny brush. Remove the stencil. Remove any further excess balls with tweezers. Then put into reflow oven. And it come out looking like a million dollars. Follows the KISS principal. Hey love your board view software. Great stuff. When does the new software come out for Mac???
That's some cool stuff. I never did believe those folks who claimed solder paste had a shelf life and it was no good after it dries up. It may not be what it was but it's not trash. Heck, put a few drops of IPA or some rosin flux in it and rejuvenate it.
I threw out multiple tubs of this stuff in the past. For its intended purpose, used for stencil-pasting on to PCBs, then yes, it definitely has that shelf life aspect, if you're expecting a specific viscosity and granuality, ( suspecting that over time the balls cold-weld together slightly), but for BGA reballing, definitely not a problem, keep it alive and keep using it.
Nothing wrong with that job Paul 👍 I tend to add a bit of liquid flux when that China stuff is a bit too dry, I just find the chip releases easier from the stencil.
I've often wondered if more flux is needed, or more solvent (ethanol or IPA, not always sure which they've used as the agent in the flux). Seems to work either way. Have you seen how Paul S uses the tea-strainer to put the stencil + chip in to the ultrasonic to separate & clean? )
Paul Daniels .. No not seen that mate.. If your after something to restrain tiny ICs in the ultrasonic.. Just search Amazon or Ebay for 'Ultrasonic mesh ball', and you'll see the type of thing I use. It similar to a tea strainer but a purpose made thing with a closble mesh ball on the end of its handle. John
With those direct heat stencils, when removing the stencil it has to be warm in order to keep from pulling balls off. Look into the 3d printed stencils, they have a slot to hold the chip perfectly, and are a whole lot easier to reball imho. Great Work!
No 3D available for this chip. I've looked in to have some manufactured but the cost was a bit silly for limited runs (understandably) Getting the stencil warm works because it gets the flux running again but I find putting them in to the ultrasonic of just leaving them in IPA for a few minutes works too. Often I can separate them out shortly after the balls have solidified, before the flux between the underface and the stencil has decided to bond up too much.
Tried my first SMC reball on an old chip today. A few balls were larger than the rest so I need to refine my technique. I also had trouble getting the SMC off the stencil. Practise makes perfect I suppose
Nice Job Paul ,but finally what setting did you applied on your Quick ( as you started at 25Lpm then increased the Air flow in the middle of the video ) , regarding the temp you left it at 420 deg Celcius I guess. What's the best way to get dry paste easily : let the cup open few days? Best Regards from FRANCE ;)
if u really want to use dry paste please secure ur stencil and ic with capiton tape. because it is impossible to hold a stencil in accurate place with tweeters while applying hard dry paste. and after applying paste u cant even see the surface of ic. reballing is an art. i spent continuous 12 hours on successfully reballing and making a working 820-00165 board first time, now I do it within 10 minutes. feel free to use any stencil, paste, and balls u r comfortable with. never give up, the skill matter most regardless of the process.
I already use this method a lot, I went to tweezer-down/no-tape because the tape was being too problematic. Accuracy isn't absolutely required, so long as the paste doesn't squeeze out between the stencil & chip.
I suppose wet or dry doesn't really matter as long as it suits the individual and gets the job done. One thing I did notice though is that Paul S uses a Tee-Bag strainer to put the chip and stencil into the ultra-sonic to separate them. Cheers.
Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you. I've been watching the same videos you have and each time I've been screaming at the screen (and commenting) that PaulS and Louis need to try dryer flux - hopefully they'll watch this and we'll see them try it for themselves.
Sadly I don't have one of those boards with the new-fangled USB-C chips (though I do have the chips). There was another video I think from about 36hrs ago where he was doing an SMC. Ended up with one big ball still on there in the end. He's certainly done a lot of them in his time, just know he hates it every time.
lol ya i mean to me it looks like hes struggling all the time with them i think he needs more practice lol or just discover dry paste :) I wonder how he would manage a iphone BB Cpu or cpu lol
before comparing with louis 2 things u should remember. 1) Power on the board u actually worked with, there might be solder bridges underneath when u installed it. 2) do the entire process in live stream, so that we can get u have done it unedited. love u paul from india.
1) this is a donor board, this was about the making of the balls on the SMC, not really the application on the PCB 2) it has been done many times on live-stream in the time since, just watch the various "LIVE" prefix videos and you'll see. This video is almost a year old. It was a one-off opportunity to see how my dry-paste reballing routine that I use with other chips worked with the SMC when I had (at this point) never done an SMC prior.
Not possible to remove the stencil before the paste as been reflowed in to balls, the paste will just go with the stencil leaving nothing more than a few grains of paste on the pads. Typically the 'stuck stencil' problem is mostly due to flux acting like a glue which is why it tends to let go again when heated up slightly ( not to the point of melting the balls though ).
Great job, Paul I am a beginner, I would like to have two information, the first one: what temperature do you use to create the tin balls on the smc chip? the second: what temperature do you use when you solder the chip on the logic board? regards Daniele
Paul said what temp and air on the Quick if you watched the video :) 420° C and air 25 although he may bump the air up marginally later in the video (40 - 60) ruclips.net/video/hZYG2my-S6o/видео.html Hot air settings: 8mm straight nozzle, 450'C @ 110 lpm for laptops
Well that looked spot on, perhaps having dryer paste creates less mad bubbling because it's not over saturated with flux. Lots of bubbles/gaps make a mess perhaps. Louis does like to go mad with a river of flux, perhaps less is more :-D. He does push your software, even if he has problems with it, i suspect a crap o.s is causing trouble. Straight win7 may be better.
Yes, that's exactly the reason; the reduction of fluidity means a lot less bubbling out / voids, causing greater inconsistencies with balls; there's also the issue of seepage between the stencil and the chip ( which is why having the flattest of flat stencils is such a requirement with normal paste ). There's a lot of teething issues with the rollout of the new software, inevitable to a great degree, even with a larger budget ( I remember OS/2 having a colossal launch failure with a show stopper fault after they had gone "gold", don't even have to mention Vista ). There's a couple of PDF-search limitation issues that pop up now and then too, but they have been fixed.
ya only time you want floating bubbles is in sparkling wines not in reballing. I was astounded yesterday how liquid the paste was that Louis was using on that SMC. Would of cause the balls to float too much.
I did in one of the previous videos do a close up examination. Basically most of the units on the market that look like this one are plated and thicker. If they look glossy/chrome, they're not the ones :(
also the stencils have a side where they have "sharper" edgeslike where it was punched through youll want the sharper edges on the side away from the smc, this will make it so that the balls off solder cant grip onto the edges and the whole chip just falls away when finished
Agree, so long as the outcome is what you want, then all good. Much happier doing BGA jobs now with dry[er] paste. I'll keep the good wet stuff for stencil jobs in new board assembly productions.
So suprised that none of the solder balls stuck to the stencil when you were separating them. I think you did a real professional job on that reballing. Of course, I have never done it before but did watch Louis's attempt and he took considerable more time to do it ;)
I think some of the problem is if your paste is too wet, then due to the gas/bubbles created, it stops the ball from connecting to the pad in time, before either the flux hardens over or vanishes. It could come down to personal use but I know my success rate for reballing jobs is notably better with dry paste compared to fresh/wet.
that stencil looks nothing like what louis uses. way to preddy. those are some sexy balls. dry paste seemed to work well, didnt stick to the stencil like somebodies elses.
The change to dry-paste was a game changer for iPhone rework, so I figured it was time to try it with the macbooks; going to be doing that more often with the constant migration to BGA chips on the new releases. I do like Paul S's idea of using a tea-strainer to hold the stencil+chip in the ultrasonic. Would have been nicer to have a larger stencil though.
Agreed, that would be a good solution to a lot of things. Other option is to buy a desktop CNC mill and carve out suitable holders from FRP, metal or wood.
@@pldaniels Absolutely. I can't believe I missed that. Much better than my idea, and probably cheaper. If I ever start doing repair work, I will definitely buy one. And your videos are amazing, much better that that Louis guy. 😂😂
I wonder about Louis sometimes especially when he starts intimate conversations with the board he is repairing ;) I guess that's his anti stress method of repair as he seems always to be thinking at warp speed overclocking his mental faculties.
You made the reballing look easy, today I spent over an hour trying to do exactly the same thing... and got nowhere, each time I got a bit better though, on the last time I actually got the chip off the stencil, but was missing a few balls and some were uneven in size, cleaned it off ready to try again tomorrow... I’ve never done bga before so it’s a hell of a learning curve.
It's all good practice. Since you've not done reballing before then it's not a fair comparison with what I did here, since at least I'd already done plenty of reballing jobs, just never an SMC one. After a while that brain/hand/eye coordination should develop nicely in conjunction of knowing your hot air machine's behaviour too.
Uneven balls can be tolerated within a certain range, so don't fret too much if there's one fractionally larger/smaller, so long as they all make contact with the pads and don't touch each other :D
Best of luck!
Nice job Paul!!! And everybody has their different ways of doing things. And there is no perfect way. Whatever works for you.
But I used to use paste, but it was too messy for me, and also has balls joining together, and that sent me a bit crazy. Now I use a 80mm reball clamp/jig, with the 980 stencil (that fits a 80mm clamp)
I clamp the smc in the clamp. Clean it up, brush on a thin coat of flux. Put stencil over the top. Then I roll-on 0.4mm leaded solder balls. Each ball finds its hole. Remove any excess balls a tiny brush. Remove the stencil. Remove any further excess balls with tweezers. Then put into reflow oven.
And it come out looking like a million dollars. Follows the KISS principal.
Hey love your board view software. Great stuff. When does the new software come out for Mac???
That's some cool stuff.
I never did believe those folks who claimed solder paste had a shelf life and it was no good after it dries up. It may not be what it was but it's not trash.
Heck, put a few drops of IPA or some rosin flux in it and rejuvenate it.
I threw out multiple tubs of this stuff in the past. For its intended purpose, used for stencil-pasting on to PCBs, then yes, it definitely has that shelf life aspect, if you're expecting a specific viscosity and granuality, ( suspecting that over time the balls cold-weld together slightly), but for BGA reballing, definitely not a problem, keep it alive and keep using it.
Thanks for this video, it's always good to see SMC's reballing techniques, help in learning.
Greetings from Brazil.
🚀 +1 Brasil. Sou de Belém-PA.
Nothing wrong with that job Paul 👍
I tend to add a bit of liquid flux when that China stuff is a bit too dry, I just find the chip releases easier from the stencil.
I've often wondered if more flux is needed, or more solvent (ethanol or IPA, not always sure which they've used as the agent in the flux). Seems to work either way. Have you seen how Paul S uses the tea-strainer to put the stencil + chip in to the ultrasonic to separate & clean? )
Paul Daniels .. No not seen that mate.. If your after something to restrain tiny ICs in the ultrasonic.. Just search Amazon or Ebay for 'Ultrasonic mesh ball', and you'll see the type of thing I use. It similar to a tea strainer but a purpose made thing with a closble mesh ball on the end of its handle.
John
With those direct heat stencils, when removing the stencil it has to be warm in order to keep from pulling balls off. Look into the 3d printed stencils, they have a slot to hold the chip perfectly, and are a whole lot easier to reball imho. Great Work!
No 3D available for this chip. I've looked in to have some manufactured but the cost was a bit silly for limited runs (understandably)
Getting the stencil warm works because it gets the flux running again but I find putting them in to the ultrasonic of just leaving them in IPA for a few minutes works too. Often I can separate them out shortly after the balls have solidified, before the flux between the underface and the stencil has decided to bond up too much.
"Don't delay buy today" ;)
It's infectious.
Its annoying, chased me from his channel to yours :)
He missed his calling as a 1990's late night infomercial voice actor.
Tried my first SMC reball on an old chip today. A few balls were larger than the rest so I need to refine my technique. I also had trouble getting the SMC off the stencil. Practise makes perfect I suppose
Nice Job Paul ,but finally what setting did you applied on your Quick ( as you started at 25Lpm then increased the Air flow in the middle of the video ) , regarding the temp you left it at 420 deg Celcius I guess. What's the best way to get dry paste easily : let the cup open few days? Best Regards from FRANCE ;)
I think these days I'm usually at about 40~60lpm, really depends on the job.
if u really want to use dry paste please secure ur stencil and ic with capiton tape. because it is impossible to hold a stencil in accurate place with tweeters while applying hard dry paste. and after applying paste u cant even see the surface of ic. reballing is an art. i spent continuous 12 hours on successfully reballing and making a working 820-00165 board first time, now I do it within 10 minutes. feel free to use any stencil, paste, and balls u r comfortable with. never give up, the skill matter most regardless of the process.
I already use this method a lot, I went to tweezer-down/no-tape because the tape was being too problematic. Accuracy isn't absolutely required, so long as the paste doesn't squeeze out between the stencil & chip.
I suppose wet or dry doesn't really matter as long as it suits the individual and gets the job done. One thing I did notice though is that Paul S uses a Tee-Bag strainer to put the chip and stencil into the ultra-sonic to separate them. Cheers.
I was just talking to him about that earlier, it's a neat idea.
Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you. I've been watching the same videos you have and each time I've been screaming at the screen (and commenting) that PaulS and Louis need to try dryer flux - hopefully they'll watch this and we'll see them try it for themselves.
Yep, it's a revelation (to change to dry paste).
wet? check, dry? check, premade-balls? check... now for somebody to make a parody guide reballing an SMC with "conductive glue" and seeing if it works
Lol nice one Paul Yeah it was driving me nuts also lol but he was reballing USB C chips mainly :) and use tape to secure the stencil
Sadly I don't have one of those boards with the new-fangled USB-C chips (though I do have the chips).
There was another video I think from about 36hrs ago where he was doing an SMC. Ended up with one big ball still on there in the end.
He's certainly done a lot of them in his time, just know he hates it every time.
lol ya i mean to me it looks like hes struggling all the time with them i think he needs more practice lol or just discover dry paste :) I wonder how he would manage a iphone BB Cpu or cpu lol
Dry power is the ticket.
Last few frames of video show a small component (resistor/cap) that seems out of place. It's to the left of SMC.
It's a donor board.
before comparing with louis 2 things u should remember. 1) Power on the board u actually worked with, there might be solder bridges underneath when u installed it. 2) do the entire process in live stream, so that we can get u have done it unedited. love u paul from india.
1) this is a donor board, this was about the making of the balls on the SMC, not really the application on the PCB
2) it has been done many times on live-stream in the time since, just watch the various "LIVE" prefix videos and you'll see.
This video is almost a year old. It was a one-off opportunity to see how my dry-paste reballing routine that I use with other chips worked with the SMC when I had (at this point) never done an SMC prior.
I think (although I’ve never done it) it is best to remove the stencil before hearing the paste, removed the risk of ripping the ic pads off
Not possible to remove the stencil before the paste as been reflowed in to balls, the paste will just go with the stencil leaving nothing more than a few grains of paste on the pads.
Typically the 'stuck stencil' problem is mostly due to flux acting like a glue which is why it tends to let go again when heated up slightly ( not to the point of melting the balls though ).
How wide is that solder wick your using - thanks
That'd be the 2.5mm wide I believe.
Great job, Paul
I am a beginner, I would like to have two information, the first one:
what temperature do you use to create the tin balls on the smc chip?
the second:
what temperature do you use when you solder the chip on the logic board?
regards
Daniele
Paul said what temp and air on the Quick if you watched the video :) 420° C and air 25 although he may bump the air up marginally later in the video (40 - 60) ruclips.net/video/hZYG2my-S6o/видео.html Hot air settings: 8mm straight nozzle, 450'C @ 110 lpm for laptops
Hey Paul, that was great work. What brand of solder paste did you use? I would like to purchase some because I have never tried it. Thanks!
I've forgotten specifically, but so long as it's 63/37 leaded, and fresh, it should be good.
At ipad rehab they dry the paste with a napkin press the paste many times until it is no longer liquidy
How are you powering your Quick, I thought they didn't make one suitable for Australia?
Union Repair have the 220V version with AU plug. All good to go. Shipping is a bit expensive, so don't expect to have much change out of $450 AUD.
Well that looked spot on, perhaps having dryer paste creates less mad bubbling because it's not over saturated with flux.
Lots of bubbles/gaps make a mess perhaps.
Louis does like to go mad with a river of flux, perhaps less is more :-D.
He does push your software, even if he has problems with it, i suspect a crap o.s is causing trouble.
Straight win7 may be better.
Yes, that's exactly the reason; the reduction of fluidity means a lot less bubbling out / voids, causing greater inconsistencies with balls; there's also the issue of seepage between the stencil and the chip ( which is why having the flattest of flat stencils is such a requirement with normal paste ).
There's a lot of teething issues with the rollout of the new software, inevitable to a great degree, even with a larger budget ( I remember OS/2 having a colossal launch failure with a show stopper fault after they had gone "gold", don't even have to mention Vista ). There's a couple of PDF-search limitation issues that pop up now and then too, but they have been fixed.
ya only time you want floating bubbles is in sparkling wines not in reballing. I was astounded yesterday how liquid the paste was that Louis was using on that SMC. Would of cause the balls to float too much.
Greg M, Yep louis seems to have forgotten the winning methods.
Perhaps paul is doing too much of the difficult tasks now.
whats up with the poor little cap on the left of the chip
Donor board in this case, so I guess it was a knocked off stray wandering around.
@@pldaniels cool I was wondering
That looked good. Does the fan spin?
if I flick it a few times while people aren't looking ;)
How about a high res picture and some spec measurements of your ‘beloved spudger’ and maybe some of us could help?
I did in one of the previous videos do a close up examination. Basically most of the units on the market that look like this one are plated and thicker. If they look glossy/chrome, they're not the ones :(
With my quick8611dw you can adjust the settings when holstered just press a button and the settings will popup
also the stencils have a side where they have "sharper" edgeslike where it was punched through youll want the sharper edges on the side away from the smc, this will make it so that the balls off solder cant grip onto the edges and the whole chip just falls away when finished
Also interesting way of using the braid never thought of doing it like that, Good job btw!
I'll look for that next time. Used to the nice 3D square hole stencils that make reballing a breeze.
yeah they are so much easier to use
Nice Reball
probably not first, dry paste, wet paste, premade balls, as long as the balls drop, everything's good.
Agree, so long as the outcome is what you want, then all good. Much happier doing BGA jobs now with dry[er] paste. I'll keep the good wet stuff for stencil jobs in new board assembly productions.
must be an old board... that shape of balls under the SMC is long gone
practice on the old before attempting on the new, that's how i learnt
You missed a tiny copper pin to pick
Sccccccccrrrrrrraaaaaping is raaaaaaaapinnnnnng!! :-) Let's out a blood curdling scream.
i love reballing SMC's...
Is there a toll-free number for that?
postage to UK from AUS is pretty high. but you are way ahead of me when it comes to streaming content.
you did it like a boss :-) nice video ...and you are far far way from a noob
SMC n00b ;)
I Reckon Great Job :)
Vely, vely good fo first time Missa Magloo!!
@6:00 nobody shills like Louis Paul but keep at it :)
Louis is the king of shill.
So suprised that none of the solder balls stuck to the stencil when you were separating them. I think you did a real professional job on that reballing. Of course, I have never done it before but did watch Louis's attempt and he took considerable more time to do it ;)
I think some of the problem is if your paste is too wet, then due to the gas/bubbles created, it stops the ball from connecting to the pad in time, before either the flux hardens over or vanishes. It could come down to personal use but I know my success rate for reballing jobs is notably better with dry paste compared to fresh/wet.
i use 35mm solder balls
that stencil looks nothing like what louis uses. way to preddy. those are some sexy balls. dry paste seemed to work well, didnt stick to the stencil like somebodies elses.
The change to dry-paste was a game changer for iPhone rework, so I figured it was time to try it with the macbooks; going to be doing that more often with the constant migration to BGA chips on the new releases.
I do like Paul S's idea of using a tea-strainer to hold the stencil+chip in the ultrasonic. Would have been nicer to have a larger stencil though.
Buy a 3d printer and make stencil and chip holders. Or rather, make a mold with the 3d printer and then use sillicone to make the holder.
Agreed, that would be a good solution to a lot of things. Other option is to buy a desktop CNC mill and carve out suitable holders from FRP, metal or wood.
@@pldaniels Absolutely. I can't believe I missed that. Much better than my idea, and probably cheaper. If I ever start doing repair work, I will definitely buy one. And your videos are amazing, much better that that Louis guy. 😂😂
^^^ that was sarcasm I really enjoy both channels.
@@xhivo97 I'll have to see if I can get one, I've been after one for quite a long time but they're still quite expensive for the amount I'd use it.
as ever great video !!!
Fuckin great caption xD
Poul this Hole is to big🤣😎
Which solder paste did you use?