No Andrew,
You have hit the nail on the head!
Yes a lot of those simpler (cheaper?) stations may work with a
sufficient degree of user skill and experience. Our products are all for
aviation use, do you want to fly in a plane where the avionics equipment was
possibly not fully 100% compliant with the best assembly/rework practices,
where some components may have been seriously overcooked during rework? We
don't want to be burning any more boards than we have to in rework, they are
far too expensive at that point and we build smaller batches (5 - 25, possibly
50pcs typically).
I also just really wondered about the SMD ICs with central tabs being
reworkable by some of the equipment/methods mentioned with the simpler tools.
How to get the heat to that TAB pad without burning the rest of the board. Then
resoldering the replacement part in afterwards.
We are looking for a serious rework station but just don't want to pay
almost as much as we might pay for full blown SMT production line equipment. It
would not necessarily be for BGA reworking but by the time you get a reasonably
good system it probably will do a lot of BGA rework as well.
Sincerely,
Brad Velander
Senior PCB Designer
Northern Airborne Technology
#14 - 1925 Kirschner Road,
Kelowna, BC, V1Y 4N7.
tel (250) 763-2232 ext. 225
fax (250) 762-3374
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 9:39 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [PEDA] Hot Air reflow stations.
Brad,
I think you've hit the nail on the head...When I first began
incorporating SMT components to my designs, (NASA GRC, circa 1997/8/9) I
also bought one of these ~1K rework stations, (A Hakko as I recall), but
then I had to come up with a magnifier, fixturing: (PCB holders,
microtranslation stages, component placement fixtures, etc.), a better
way to control temperature and airflow...I think these gizmoes are fine
for a compact, low-cost, desktop engineering station, ie, low count
prototyping on relatively insubstantial components, but I wonder if
they're not insufficient for serious work (by serious, I mean no
disrespect to anyone, but assembling a board using multiple
high-pin-count component using what is essentialy a hobbyist tool is not
very sensible when working on say, a NASA "flight" board or military
contracts...)
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