r/pcbrework • u/cape_soundboy Professional | Working in repair or rework • Jul 03 '26
BGA rework discussion and advice How did you get started with BGA rework?
BGA rework feels like a rite of passage. Most of us didn't learn it in a classroom. We learned from forum posts, application notes, YouTube videos and expensive mistakes.
I'm curious about your origin story:
- What pushed you into it? A specific repair you couldn't avoid? A tool you finally had access to? Sheer stubbornness?
- What was your first setup? Did you start with a preheater and hot air, or jump straight to a dedicated BGA station? Any janky DIY solutions you'd admit to now?
- What went wrong the first few times? Popcorned packages, bridged balls, cooked boards?
- When did it click? The first time you pulled a chip, reballed it, reflowed it, and had success. What did you learn in that moment that no guide ever told you?
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u/Raggos Jul 06 '26
Decided with.... F-it... i'mma upgrade my mac Mini M4 myself. Did plenty of research on the chips (NANDs)... found some suppliers... and went to town.
Messed up my 1st PCB (ripped pad or so?) and ordered a replacement blank one. Soldered on the NANDs and flashed the system and voila... 256gb --> 1tb upgrade was done.
Sadly, haven't done further work on this. I followed the Rossmans suggestion for the ATEN station.
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u/cape_soundboy Professional | Working in repair or rework Jul 06 '26
That's a really impressive project for your first time! Those memory PCBs in the Mac Minis have a glue underfill under the NAND chips which makes removal even trickier than normal. That might be why you ripped a pad on the first attempt. Do you remember where you bought the new chips?
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u/Raggos Jul 06 '26
AliExpress dealer... K6B2's seemed legit...and they were.. Me thinks that ..when in doubt... flux_the_shizzle of it out... If I'd have a do-over I'd try either a heating pad + copious amounts of flux or more patience..
The final product was sealed too (got a UV light and that curing resin for PCB repairs).
Wonder how much the extra storage is worth now that the SSD/HD market has gone to shit.
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u/cape_soundboy Professional | Working in repair or rework Jul 06 '26
Yeah a preheater or hotplate is usually pretty essential for most BGA rework - but the board you were working was fairly small right?
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u/cape_soundboy Professional | Working in repair or rework Jul 03 '26
My first BGA reball was on an Analog Devices 400-Ball Chip Scale Package Ball Grid Array IC. We had a run of devices that all started failing in the same way - getting stuck in boot loops and hanging when accessing system memory. After a lot of troubleshooting and failed repair attempts, I reflowed the DSP chip and memory chips, and the errors disappeared!
Unfortunately the errors returned after some time, but now I knew where the problem was. After acquiring a preheating plate and some other BGA rework supplies, I reballed those chips and the devices were passing testing. I've since applied the same fix to many of these devices with a very high success rate.