ACE Offers Unique BGA Cleansing Processing with World-class Coplanarity

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ACE Production Technologies, Inc. is pleased to announce that its component lead tinning services operation offers BGA cleansing with unmatched coplanarity.

“Many of our high reliability and military/aerospace customers need to remove the original BGA solder balls prior to converting BGA devices from RoHS to tin-lead or from tin-lead to lead-free,” said Roger Cox, Operations Manager of ACE Component Services. “The ideal method for doing this is the use of a special dynamic side wave process in combination with a nitrogen blow-off which has a significant advantage of minimizing the accumulation of molten solder.”

The de-balling process typically consists of the complete removal of the original BGA solder spheres and pad finish prior to other process steps including site preparation and placement of new solder spheres followed by reflowing to restore the BGA devices to their original specification or for conversion. Additional process steps can also include optical inspection of sphere condition, ball shear or XRF testing, ionic cleanliness and solderability testing.

“Due to the excellent repeatability of the ACE LTS lead tinning machines and its robotic presentation of the BGA to the molten solder in combination with a special dynamic side wave nozzle specifically for BGA ball cleansing and a heated nitrogen blow-off, we are able to maintain the coplanarity of BGAs within 0.003” (0.075mm),” stated Cox. “Our customers have told us we provide them with cleansed BGAs that are more flat than our competitors and are more consistent from part-to-part.” In addition, ACE Component Services has the ability to retin bottom terminated components such as QFNs and DFNs as small as 3mm x 3mm and with a lead pitch down to 0.5mm. Leaded fine-pitch SMT components such as QFPs can be re-tinned down to 0.012” (0.3mm) lead pitch with bridge free results.

About ACE

ACE Production Technologies, Inc. designs and builds simple and affordable selective soldering and lead tinning systems suitable for lead-free and tin-lead electronics assembly. ACE’s complete line of rugged and reliable selective soldering systems all feature lead-free compatible solder pots and are ideal for low, medium or high volume production. ACE also provides solderability testing, lead tinning services and process development services. For more information click here, call 509-924-4898 or email sales@ace-protech.com.