Complete PCB Hand Assembly (FPGA in BGA Package + reflow)

[@tablatronix]

I just stumbled on this video again, and remembered this was one of the things I saw that got me back into electronics and realizing that maybe I could actually do smd work at home. Which 2 years later I, now do and have a lab and can design and reflow smd pcbs. Thanks!

[@kateiry4719]

This guy at 27:06: You should able to see there's no short in between so that all work Chip next to U15: *I'm I a joke to you?*

[@sc0rpi0n0]

27:04 the chip on the left is clearly misaligned and will short.

[@jonny__b]

A little late to be warning him now I think

[@Kysen10]

@@jonny__b lol

[@satm380]

Good observation

[@ItsFrank929]

I saw this video trending and decided what the hell, might as well watch it. you sir are extremely soothing to watch, I was so relaxed watching this video. you really triggered my ASMR. keep it up

[@zhitailiu3876]

wow, such a beautiful video! When you were picking and placing the Atmel chip, my hands were shaking too. XD

[@mikeselectricstuff]

Having that vacuum tube coming from the back of the bench is just asking for it to drag over the PCB at some point...

[@ColinOFlynn]

+mikeselectricstuff Yeah, I switched to using a board holder anyway as made it a little more ergonomic... although when you drop a resistor it bounces away due to the ~20cm drop so I'm sure things could still be better I'm sure!

[@DrTune]

You can tell it hasn't happened yet or the tube wouldn't be going that way any more. ....Imagine the cursing! :-)

[@Les-electroniciens]

That's a great tutorial Colin, with many excellent tips! Thanks!

[@f33net]

The rest of the paste can not be thrown away. Through the stencil or any similar BGA apply to a clean PCB or something like that, heat the thermophen and get the balls for soldering. :)

[@DarkAngel-np4ur]

very nice but you have a misalligned part at 27:05

[@SamZeloof]

This is awesome, thanks for posting!

[@DoRC]

one of the lines on the data sheet for that solder paste is "has a pleasant odor"......so that's cool.....

[@no882323]

If you have a hole for QFP positioning, you can easily do it. All you need is an acrylic stick and double-sided adhesive tape.

[@DigitalViscosity]

You got a shorted chip there at 24:05

[@rust_embedded]

Don't get me wrong, but I'm happy to see than not only I struggle to manually place tiny SMD components.

[@xmenxwk]

There is solderpaste bridge on bga footprint(bot-right) at 16:16, If you didnt remove it, I guess, it would have been painful later.

[@DrTune]

Reflow money shot starts at 22:39 Such a gorgeous sight. Damn I can't believe you populated that board by hand. How many failures (bridges/opens) have you had after reflow on the BGA or LQFP? Very ambitious, anyway :-)

[@aipcba9293]

Thanks Colin for this tutorial

[@GittaTurningback]

Not to be a boner killer, but at 27:00, when you're showing the board under the microscope, you can clearly see that the 4 pins (Closest to C45 cap) on IC right next to U15 is misaligned. Another thing that striked me while watching this was.. you did not clean the stencil side turning downwards to the freshly cleaned board, and therefore smeared fingerprints and grease all over the place from stencil to board, when doing the alignment. I did also wonder.. when using such a 'powerful' FPGA, why did you not include a FMC LPC / HPC connector, for the 16 GTP transceivers? You neither use the PCIe PHY USB3, Gigabit Ethernet? - You're using a V6 engine to drive gears, which are lifting a basket up from a water well with a tiny rope. Why exactly did you choice a FPGA with so 'many' logic cells and DSP slices / performance, why not Spartan-6 etc? I liked everything about this video.. but the design of that pcb seems strange.. have you made that yourself? If yes, care to explain?

[@RogerBarraud]

Disappointing there's no reply from Colin to this yet :-/

[@ColinOFlynn]

Honestly it's just people acting smart, why bother? I'm making a quick video so can't see the microscope very well (I don't have a tri-scope), the other flaws/shorts I caught doing the proper inspection, but I don't think anyone wants to see me carefully looking over the PCB for 5 mins. The FPGA board is for power analysis / glitching attacks. There's no high-speed IO as it wouldn't be used by 80% of customers... the large FPGA for doing stuff like running huge crypto cores or multiple cores when doing various tests on them. Data generation would normally be done on the core itself (or over the databus connection to the SAM3U). If you ask what the board is for sure am happy to explain, but if someone is making pompous claims about how it must be designed wrong, IDGAF and won't bother to respond.

[@GittaTurningback]

You see, I never told you how your FPGA board should be designed, I simple asked, because it made me wonder.. So you use the FPGA as a workhorse.. just like bitmining.. cool.. And regarding the misaligned IC, I figured out, that you would discover it sooner or later anyways.. I just wanted to help, because it looked so great.. and the actual reason for 'bringing bad news' - not to feel better or more intelligent. I did not try to come off as a smart ass,.. you did a great job, I liked your video.. - Ohh, and I found the same 'alcohol containers' on eBay, that you use in your video for isopropanol - so thank you for bringing that to my workshop - I use them all the time.. :o) - Take care..

[@statinskill]

GittaTurningback Quick feedback, I did not question a thing regarding the purpose or the design details of the board, all I wanted to see here was the reflow process. I did not give any thought as to why there is no gigabit phy usb etc. or why he was using that specific microcontroller or fpga, because I had no idea what the board is for. So when I read your comment just now, you and whoever upvoted you struck me as complete tools.

[@andrewyork3869]

@@ColinOFlynn wait is this for code fuzzing?

[@freeelectron8261]

Maybe put kapton tape on plastic headers and other lower temp part packages.

[@kentvandervelden]

Nice work, great video. I wish my eyesight was good enough and my hands steady enough to do this work.

[@Cisco8484]

1. If you did reflow the board again upside-down, would the parts stay put due to surface tension or would some of them fall off? 2. Can you provide a link for the open source reflow oven firmware replacement? 3. Very clever with the homemade vacuum pickup. 4. Anyone know the difference between the T-962 and the T-962A oven? The A model is a lot more expensive.

[@statinskill]

Cisco8484 I'm actually interested in the answer to 1.

[@GodzillaGoesGaga]

The parts will fall off or peel away when upside down. What most assembly houses do is spot glue parts in place. There's a spot glue machine that can put an exact blob of glue under the component. The paste already having been laid down first. Then the components are placed and the glue complies and then dries holding the component pads on the paste. When reflowed upside down the paste bridges the gaps (teardrop shape) and wicks up the component lead. There may be newer processes but this was what they used to do. One reflow cycle for the whole board.

[@maesitos]

Did you have the Cold junction compensation mod in this video?

[@ctoney1992]

Idk why it's trending but it's pretty awesome lol

[@j.lietka9406]

Does the completed board do anything? The plastic slide switch & cable connecter, could they have been installed a little later, after the oven cycle? Thanks

[@mikej9062]

What would you say your defect rate is with various SMD/SMT package profiles? Specifically BGA and QFP?

[@karthikvinayan8234]

Sir are there any references sources other than datasheets and user guides for a beginner to do a similar project?

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

Can somebody explain to me why it's not good to just use less paste at a time and go over multiple times when putting it on? Now it seems like you're wasting quite a lot of paste

[@Zaisini]

very cool vacum tool

[@mth469]

Thank you brother. Is there a (low cost) re-flow oven you can recommend that works right off the bat as opposed to one that needs modification up the wazoo?

[@natedeland9355]

So he's never living down the misaligned board then? Not saying that is a problem, just asking?

[@paulrudman1349]

Very helpful, thanks!

[@mikeh39]

Why aren’t you using ESD protection?

[@n.aminr.7175]

Hi Colin. Great tutorial. Do u have the end product functionality test video on your channel? would love to see the result. I'm still considering either to use TQFP or BGA FPGA package. I have not yet develop the skill sets for any SMD soldering. I guess BGA is harder vs TQFP

[@valtermonteiro9828]

Very nice... I did like this video... will i to learn more about this tecnique?

[@freeelectron8261]

Impressive work Colin. I didn't know you could do BGA's by hand like that. I am still only doing QFP's and smaller SMD's. I did the same mod to my T962. How do you check the BGA's after the bake? Really good video BTW.

[@vyhcb8643]

Красиво получилось. Молодец!

[@NadolbenBlogspot]

is BGA have an own solder ball, or enough only solder paste on PCB?

[@ColinOFlynn]

+ПЦ They do have the solder balls, but I recommend adding the paste on the PCB too. Some people have only put flux down on the PCB, but it's not as reliable a joint. Especially if using the 1.0mm pitch BGAs there is a fair amount of room!

[@RobotDiggME]

cannot agree with you anymore

[@nickst2797]

I have a project and i need to solder a BGA chip. I was thinking to create a custom equipment with hot plate and ceramic IR heater controlled with Arduino. Is it possible to do BGA soldering only with a reflow station? Only with hot air?

[@JohnPham2015]

So how do you test if the BGA package is correctly attach to the PCB?

[@homemade83]

do you know the stencil thickness used ?

[@TomStorey96]

All that effort to place the BGA, and Louis Rossmann basically uses a fly swatter to do his lol Have a project I'm working on now that I'm going to throw a couple of BGAs on. It's a bit intimidating but I see a lot of people having success, so I'm optimistic that it will work out.

[@mytvchannel1963]

Can i De-Soldier FPGA from a used Board without damaging the FPGA?

[@bhaskarbr671]

Hi, How are you soldering bottom side components (Decoupling Caps for FPGA) ?

[@ColinOFlynn]

This case I did it manually, but you can redo the reflow without issues. For this board I'd do the backside FIRST (I didn't here as it would screw up the video haha), then reflow the frontside. Surface tension should hold everything in place upside down.

[@wyles54]

I'm designing a filter system for my T962. Could you tell me the screw spacing on the back exhaust fan?

[@t.kchong7354]

this is great 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽thank u

[@freeelectron8261]

How do you check the BGA more than just partial inspection?

[@abelinkin]

stencil for Artix7. Where did you get it. I am going to attempt to make a ScopeFun (getting pcb from Crowd Supply campaign this month). It has one of the Artix7 on it in same size 256 BGA.

[@abelinkin]

Btw, a long time ago I bought a ADC board from you. Can't remember what its called but it was red and small. Never finished it btw.

[@ColinOFlynn]

I had a custom stencil for whole thing. The only generic stensil I know of are form quickchip (www.chipquik.com/store/index.php?cPath=1000).

[@companymen42]

How you place the BGA without it being misaligned? Is the pad slightly curved in so the ball can be socketed in correctly?

[@joshehring8397]

companymen42 surface tension.... the pads attract the solder and it pools up on the pad like a bead of water. So surface tension pulls it all straight. So as long as all of the solder has melted it can be bumped and jump back into place.

[@rfdave3980]

Nice vid. Did it work?

[@MrKosxrem]

Hello Colin! I got a question for you. You said that you will repeat the procedure for the back side. When you wil put the pcb in the oven, won't the components of the first side loosen and maybe come off?

[@ColinOFlynn]

The surface tension holds them on in theory. For this board I actually did the backside manually (i.e., with a soldering iron) I think. I made a second version of this, and on that board I did the backside FIRST, as it had only small capacitors etc. I know people do double-sided SMD with moderately heavy parts, so you can probably get away with fairly large ones.

[@MrKosxrem]

Thanks a lot! Keep up the good work !

[@ЕаАс-ч4з]

FPGA SPS -> PLC ?

[@glennferris2326]

colin? y didnt you use a hot air gun on the cpu and other componants rather than the machine

[@ColinOFlynn]

+Glenn Ferris The hot air gun isn't remotely as reliable... you can't control the temperature rise/fall rates. It would work, but it's a lot more likely to damage parts (either obviously by overheating, or less obvious failures / soldering issues). Once you've locked down the reflow temperature settings you don't need to worry, just fire the board in and you're done.

[@glennferris2326]

colin? please send me the name and model number of your microscope if i may ask ? where is it you purchased it etc .thsnk you in advance your so awesome in teaching everything you do. your protege glenn

[@ColinOFlynn]

I don't actually know, got it many years ago. It looks a lot like this one: www.ebay.ca/itm/10X-30X-Boom-Stand-Trinocular-Stereo-Microscope-Fluorescent-Light-/400429190834?hash=item5d3b708eb2:g:zzoAAOSweW5VaOXA I had just bought mine off ebay originally (was new, but shipped from overseas).

[@MostlyPennyCat]

If the stencil is ferrous, I bet you could hold it in place with an electromagnet under the bench...

[@Ualik123]

no way magnet will hold stencil in place good enough to spread the paste on it.

[@barryforever]

what is microscope you are using? make and model no ?

[@ColinOFlynn]

+Bharath Kumar Viswanathan Not actually sure, was ebay special from a long time ago with no name. It has a 1x & 3x switchable objective lens, and 10x eyepieces, something like www.ebay.com/itm/10X-30X-Stereo-Microscope-with-Single-Arm-Boom-Stand-/400438576244 . I also have a ring light (highly recommended). The 10x and 30x are about a perfect amount of magnification I think (10x when dealing with slightly larger parts, 30x if you need to inspect closer). Don't try using a computer-based microscope for real-time soldering (you can find them for even cheaper). The lag makes it far too annoying, an optical microscope is well worth the investment.

[@krisiluttinen]

Nice work! Hi, do you have a link with info on that inline exhaust fan? make model etc. Thanks!

[@ColinOFlynn]

I'll add more details on a blog blog post to come, but I used one like this: www.amazon.com/Tjernlund-Booster-Hydroponic-Conditioning-Exhaust/dp/B00NEO1PNA . Mine had another name on it but looked the same. I got a little speed control too.. which was needed, as at full speed it is far too much. You can almost certainly get away with the cheaper duct booster fans. The tubing is just dryer exhaust stuff.

[@Shubham-9996]

@@ColinOFlynn Please tell is pcb colour matters Black Red green For such soldering

[@mohamedyassinegarreb341]

hi, i dont understand the vacum tool how it work?

[@hauuau]

Small modified aquarium air pump constantly pulls vacuum through the flexible line. At the end of the vacuum line there is a syringe with a hole in it. When the hole is open it can't pull vacuum through the needle. When the hole is closed vacuum at the needle is enough to hold a part. Pretty simple but ingenious.

[@meareAaron]

damn soldering in those small components require a lot of tools and here i was hoping to diy replace the soldered cpu on my laptop i gues thats a big nono for me now...

[@brandonarreola6657]

pardon my, ignorance but what is the function of this device?

[@AntonioAkaPablo]

+Richard Schrader I don't think he meant for this to go trending. so it's likely not meant for everyone.

[@ColinOFlynn]

+brandon arreola Basically the board I'm assembling is used for various tests in my R&D work (it's a FPGA development board more specifically). It appears this video somehow got linked as trending, no idea as the video is supposed to be for electrical engineer types to see a particular assembly technique. It's not exactly popular content (by my definition), so I'm sure there will be some confused posts haha.

[@esam461]

Very cool thanks

[@DavidKirtley]

Does the surface tension pull the parts more into alignment when it flows?

[@ColinOFlynn]

Yup! got to be careful though as if it's too far off it might pull it the wrong way. You can see one of the TSSOP packages aligned wrong, but that was the only part it happened too.

[@DavidKirtley]

+Colin O'Flynn It's off topic for the video, but can you recommend a tutorial for FPGA programming that doesn't suck? I have one Altera prototype board and one Xylix board but their info and their programming tools really blow (in my opinion coming from a programming background)

[@kennym2977]

+Colin O'Flynn There is a nice view of the TSSOP which was a little off kilter and wound up bridging the surface tension at 27:04 on the left just below centre. Surface tension can also cause passives to "totem", or stick up in the air if one side liquefies and draws the part back before the other side has a chance to become molten and grab the part. Pressing parts into the paste just a little bit during placement is usually enough to get the flux to hold things down while the solder balls melt. Thanks for posting this video. It is nice to see more people doing BGA work with less than $2k in tools.

[@ColinOFlynn]

+David Kirtley For FPGAs - I liked the website fpga4fun.com, as it just takes you through some projects. The FPGA tools are amazingly poor for how large the industry is, even basic features like hiding false warnings aren't well implemented in many of them. If you talk to anyone doing FPGA it's a similar story about their feelings towards the tools.

[@ColinOFlynn]

+Kenny M Ah I forgot to mention the totem/tombstoning too... that did happen to at least two caps, you can see C1 & C52 sticking straight up at 27:30. C1 is beside the crystal for the SAM3U (large TQFP package), upper left... they are both 0402 so a little hard to see!

[@mettwurstbrotmitgurke1273]

Hi, what microscope are you using? Best!

[@rayout7]

How much is the setup? Under 1k? Dude, it looks like you've saved a ton of money by doing it yourself! This is pretty awesome! I can't wait till one day, it'll be easy and cheap to manufacture and assemble PCBs!

[@ColinOFlynn]

Under $1k if you bought everything "new/standard pricing", you could get even cheaper if you wait for used/sales. Main costs are: Oven ($350-400), SMD pickup tool ($25 for tips + $20 for aquarium pump), solder paste ($30), squeegee ($15). You'll still need an iron & hot-air rework station too, so if you don't have that add another $300-400 for a nice one (but if on the cheap ~$150). Lots of people have reused toaster ovens too with fancier controllers, but it's easier to buy the linked oven I think.

[@Ualik123]

i would rather solder everything manually using soldering iron, except bga chip. i dont like fixing things after oven.

[@zrothousand]

good job!

[@one_lettersandnumbers]

Put the camera on the other freaking side, man.

[@techwithimad4672]

nice job ! :)

[@NSAwatchesME]

i came here from hackaday. id like to be able to solder a 144 pin ARM MCU without having to pay £100 for a board. problem is i need the 4 layer board rather than being able to solder

[@ColinOFlynn]

+Allen A If you need cheap PCB lots of options... oshpark.com in US otherwise lots of overseas (see pcbshopper.com)

[@thekinglov265]

why not just build a stand off tray

[@neverland241]

why is this trending lol

[@ColinOFlynn]

+Tyrone Jordan I wish I had some sweet clue haha, it's not what I assumed trending material would be either...

[@SBAAUTO]

May i have your email

[@jannickbremm9483]

Duuude you need a PnP. Like srsly life is short man!

[@MostlyPennyCat]

I know that syringe! I have the enteric tube it connects to. Up my bloody nose 🤣😩😡😉

[@LAMAQUINAELECTRONICA]

Buy yourself a robot arm friend and placing resistors and capacitors

[@glennferris2326]

colin please turn up your volumes i love yoyr work but your volume sucks and ruins my happy place while listening to you describe qhat you are performing. thanks for hearing me rant and rave .lol. continue with more exucational videos .i love them all.

[@tonyfoster61]

He sounds like Kermit

[@rojudoge]

why is this on trending

[@BaoZiChen]

thanks for sharing