Who would use this facility ?

and why? I recently saw some printed advertising copy, including this statement concerning BGA chips "We safely remove the existing lead-free solder balls and replace them with SnPb "

cannot find reference to that on their site, just

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BGA Reballing (Lead Free / 63-37 / High Melt Ceramic Packages) $1/2 million investment in a unique technology has allowed Retronix to reball BGA and uBGA devices without inducing a thermal cycle (mass reflow), which can damage the integrity of the device. We use a laser energy pulse which attaches the solder spheres individually to the pad in less than

20m/s. The bonding of the sphere to pad in this short time does not allow heat dissipation into the silicon die, therefore offering a safe alternative to mass reflow. The equipment shown is contained within a clean room environment, supplemented by laminar flow hoods and a nitrogen chamber for the reballing process. We can process sphere sizes from 760 microns down to 100 microns.
Reply to
N_Cook
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Why? Maybe you don't like the total lack of reliability of lead free balls, perhaps?

Reply to
PeterD

with

That was my thinking. mission-critical useages with RoHs derrogation, defence/aero-space/medical or perhaps others who don't want to tarnish their otherwise good name by knowingly producing defective goods.

Reply to
N_Cook

Anyone who is concerned about tin whiskers?

Reply to
Meat Plow

with

reflow),

alternative

for

to

I thought one of the advantages of using the BGA format was to avoid closely spaced tin-whisker-liable interconnect pinning/traces.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

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Reply to
N_Cook

Watched a special on the telly the other night where lead free was mentioned. Lead inhibits the growth of whiskers they say. :)

Anyways, seems that a satellite responsible for paging went down due to whiskers a little while back. Supposedly caused quite the ruckus here on Earth. And that some scientists in aerospace are very worried about whiskers. Imagine some nuclear arms or even conventional explosives fitted with lead free electronics and the newer military and civilian aircraft electronics that are lead free.

Reply to
Meat Plow

I'll admit to not being as informed about lead-free as I should be, but I'm pretty sure the U.S. military is packing lead, so to speak. I assumed the same was true for militaries world wide.

Reply to
Smitty Two

It is not just tin-whiskers/tin-pest/poor mechanical strength. I was not aware of this side issue (due to 40 to 50 degree C extra temperature at pcb soldering stage )

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Cobham is a military concern - drone maker and in-flight fuelling equipt, but I came across their page only 2 weeks ago with otherwise inexplicable mysterious

2 faults with MLCC caps on a definitely non-military mixer-amp

Anyone aware of a www site pulling together all thse aspects? plenty out there on adopting PbF practices but little on knocking it other than piecemeal references

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

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Reply to
N_Cook

Lets hope so.

Reply to
Meat Plow

Ouch!

Maybe they made some stuff for the Airbus pitots that failed on that French 330 that crashed? I noticed not long after they pulled every last one and went with a different vendor.

Reply to
Meat Plow

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