PS3 Tips for reballing using a cheap preheater and a crappy hot gun

[athrun200]

I have just bought a cheap preheater and rework station learning how to reball. But it seems I failed miserably on my first attempt.

When I set the preheater to 250C, the motherboard can only heat up to 90C and then stopped. So I set the preheatere to 400C later, and the motherboard do heat up to 150C.

Then I thought I need to do the same for the hot gun (set to 400C), but after blowing hot air for a minute or so, there is popping sound everywhere. By the time the RSX is removed, it is already dead. Ball squeezing everywhere.

Should I simply invest in a better and more expensive equipment? Or should I continue practicing with it?
This setup already costed me 200USD. If so I would like to stick to this setup and get the most out of it.

 

[St3v3b82]

The challenge with hotair stations is to adjust the right temp and the airflow, i.e. you need to know the sweet spot for the smd part you want to solder. Depends on the size of the IC and the solder alloy. Therefor practicing is a must. Best is to start with some smaller chips, maybe do first some QFP to see how it goes and if this works fine, try some QFN packages. You may stay away from BGAs until you know more about your tools, especially from reballing

 

[athrun200]

The challenge with hotair stations is to adjust the right temp and the airflow, i.e. you need to know the sweet spot for the smd part you want to solder. Depends on the size of the IC and the solder alloy. Therefor practicing is a must. Best is to start with some smaller chips, maybe do first some QFP to see how it goes and if this works fine, try some QFN packages. You may stay away from BGAs until you know more about your tools, especially from reballing

Thanks for your advice! I do see that there are a few QFPs on the PS3 motherboard. Maybe I can practice with them first!

 

[sandungas]

A tip i did learn from squeept is he keeps the motherboard warming up for many hours (sometimes 24 hours) inside a gas oven (not a microwave, lol) to remove all the humidity from the internal motherboard layers
It seems that "water" is what creates the bumps when it evaporates

Later when you are doing the preheat before the reballing you need to use timers to control the speed of how it heats... the first warmup up to 100ºC or so should be made very slowlly... then you increase the heat even more and a bit faster... and the final last boost of +20ºC or so should be keep for no more than a couple of minutes