It is usually pretty pointless trying to do that sort of thing, except perhaps as a personal challenge.
You only need these tiny packages if you are a serious professional doing serious work, because you are either making such large quantities that the price difference is important, or because you are making specialised cards with extreme space requirements. Either way, you have access to proper equipment - and home-made solutions are too risky to be worth considering.
Oh, I agree with all that, but that wasn't the statement!
The other problem I'd add is that BGAs tend to imply significant PCB design/layout/fabrication constraints that are outside the scope of homebrew kit.
Fair 'nuff.
Indeed.
Also the Freescale KL02CSP at 1.9mm by 2.04mm, 20 pins
Nah, the maker and hobbyist community is heavily into making tiny wearables and they do stuff like that (or at least want to) all the time. This thread was started by me a year or so ago out of interest like that.
And yet *none* of these answer the question of how Olaf Kaluza applies the solder to his parts.
The first link doesn't apply solder and offers no info on how well that works.
The youtube video guy said he made 5 larger BGA boards and only one worked. The BGA in question is rather large.
The third link is about removing and replacing a rather large BGA.
The video in the fourth link is the same as the youtube video.
I appreciate the help, but I'm curious about how Olaf does it with the very tiny parts he is using.
many of the cheap pcb protype shops also make solder paste stencils
paste,stencil, hotplate/toasteroven and you can pretty much solder anything
-Lasse
In theory. I'd like to hear from someone who had soldered such a fine pitch part. Someone mentioned the LPC1102/1104 in a 2.2x2.36 mm BGA-16 package. I believe that would be approx 0.5 mm ball spacing so the pads would be approx half that or 0.25 mm or 0.010 inches. I would not want to have to align the stencil to the accuracy required to put solder paste down in 10 mil squares.
I guess soldering with no paste is an option. We *are* talking about hand made prototypes after all. But the guy who was soldering much larger pitch devices only got 1 in 5 to work. Maybe that improved with subsequent passes.
I still say it is just plain easier and if you assign any reasonable value to your time, cheaper to pay a shop to do it by machine.
I'd be interested to know where to get this done and what it costs. The cheap prototype shops I know of can't deal with anything that small, but I'm not that conversant with the field.
I have not used these guys so no guarantees. They send me ads regularly and I think others have said they use them.
I know there are some Chinese PCB makers who have a good reputation and provide low pricing. I don't recall seeing any good web sites for Chinese assembly houses. Personally I am happy working with a local outfit. I don't know for sure just how advanced their technology is. When it comes to production, I try not to push anyone's envelope, especially my own.
The problem with a remote fab house is rework. Shipping both ways and trying to convey instructions is not so easy. Heck, when I am there in the plant it can be hard making my instructions clear enough.
Search youtube for "reballing bga". There are many videos showing how to remove, reball and resolder large BGAs, e.g. PC motherboard processors, Nvidia GPUs
As to whether it is cheaper to get someone else to do it, don't forget to factor in the costs of locating such a company, getting the materials to them etc.
Odd, I searched on that part number and it shows up in a product guide as being under development, available Q2, 2014. Nuvoton also makes ARMs, but I don't know they come in such small packages.
Doesn't seem to be a real part though. Searching on their web site doesn't pull it up. Odd...
They do have parts in 20 pin TSSOP packages which are rather small, not
2 mm BGA small though. But with leads they can be hand soldered.
If you mean N76E884, I think it is not quite real yet. It appears in this Sept 2014 product brief too :
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