Hand soldering of BGA chips

[djsb]

Has anyone had any experience of hand soldering BGA chips using hot air? There are a few video's on the sparkfun website just wondering if anyone has tried this for themselves. Thanks.

David.

[slburris]

I have not, but SchmartBoard has an adapter that's intriguing:

https://www.youtube.com/nealgb#p/u/6/D3PTpaB4kro

Scott

[NiHaoMike]

There's a way to do it with a hot plate and heat gun. Apply a special flux to the board, put the BGAs on, use the hot plate to get the board up to a preheat temperature, and the heat gun does the actual soldering. I have not actually done that with BGA, but I have done that with TSOP. BGA is definitely harder to get right and very difficult to check.

I have read stories about fixing video cards with bad solder connections using a propane torch. Surprisingly, it sometimes does work.

[Time]

I have used a heat gun to solder BGA and also a blow torch.

I like adding the hot plate idea.

[DJPhil]

blow torch

That's got to feel awesome. I'd feel ten feet tall for a day if I got that to work properly.
The closest I've ever been to that awesome was seating a tire on a rim with lighter fluid, then I found out it was a well known practice.

[abbtech]

No idea how to do this. I would think a hot plate would be your best bet though.

Either way I would love to see the results. Take some pics along the way so we can see how it works!