Hi,
I have a home project currently targeted to an Altera 144 pin EQFP. There is a pad on the underside that must be soldered to the ground plane. Is there any way of (de)soldering that pad without special equipment or should I look for another package?
Alternatively, is it possible to to solder a ball grid array without special equipment? The adaptors I've seen are prohibitively expensive.
For clarification, "special equipment" is anything that costs more than $200.
Thanks, Gary
If you're laying out your own PCB, just put a big plated through hole there, then you can jam solder in there by hand.
Toaster oven, but it takes practice, and a real PCB with soldermask are pretty much required. You'll never get the solder to stay under the BGA balls without a mask.
Well, I've seen halogen toaster ovens for 20$ new.
That shouldn't be difficult. Just put a lot of unmasked vias in the pad below the package. After soldering the pins heat a via and fill it with solder. When the solder starts to rise from the other vias, the pad is also soldered. Using leaded solder and flux helps.
Desoldering can be done using a paint stripper / heat gun. The heat gun is also handy to pre-heat the board prior to soldering the pad under the FPGA.
-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) --------------------------------------------------------------
I don't have experience with BGA since designing 6+ layer PCB scares me. For the Quad No-leads packages, I found a heat gun is best way to tackle these. Firstly tin all pads so there is visible solder bumps. The large middle pad only needs a bit of solder. Place IC within about +-1mm of position. Flood with liquid rosin flux.
Preheat PCB to 100 ~ 130C over a electric hot plate such as;
Heat from above using hot air gun. When solder melts, remove heat gun and give IC a nudge allowing solder surface tension to pull into alignment.
After I posted I thought of just drilling a hole through. One or more plated through hole is a better idea.
Sounds challenging. I think I will stick it QFPs for now.
Thanks to all who responded Gary
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