SMD components may be a little challenging for the home builder
– even though the’re inordinately practical for homebrew PCBs –
but if you play around with electronics and solder long enough,
you’re eventually going to run into the horrors of BGA parts.
Instead of convenient pins, BGA parts have tiny metallic balls
on which solder is applied, a board is thrown through a reflow
oven, and hopefully at the end, everything works. Sometimes
these balls corrode or otherwise need to be reflowed. This isn’t
an easy process, so [Edmar] came up with his own BGA rework
station that costs much less than commercial offerings.
[Edmar]‘s build began when he wanted to repair a graphics card.
A common error on his Amilo XI2428 graphics card is having the
small balls on the underside of the chip corrode, leaving the
user with a non-functional graphics card. Towel trick
notwithstanding, the easiest way to fix this error is to heat up
the card to above the melting point of solder, removing the
chip, and resoldering it with caref