I have a very random question. I reached out to MakeICT and they pointed me here, which was a great idea. Is anyone familiar with any tech in the greater Wichita area who performs IC chip replacements via hot air soldering? I have an Xbox One X with a potentially faulty HDMI retimer chip. I have a replacement chip and have called all over town with no luck. It spent the last week with a local computer tech but in the end his hot air station couldn’t get hot enough to melt the solder holding the chip. I’ve done a ton of research and know they can typically be removed at 450°C.
I have a lengthy history as a wireless tech and tech in the video game industry, but very little experience with hot air stations and zero experience working soldering under a microscope. I’m trying to think outside the box on this one. I can mail out for the repair but I was hoping to keep it local, while making a new electronics repair guru contact. Any leads would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Shawn, welcome to our forum. Is this what you are trying to replace?
If so, it does have a decent thermal pad on the bottom, so the board likely needs to be pre-heated for a bit before it can be removed. The large thermal connection to the PCB is designed to soak up heat from the chip, so that can make it hard to remove with direct application of hot air alone.
Correct. There are tons of videos and info on the web regarding this cursed chip (or cursed board location due to long periods of heat from the console APU.
I haven’t come across any cases where they are preheating the board, though I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt. Most simply coat the pins with flux and use 450-500°C heat, starting at around 50% airflow. This is the video I keep circling back to:
Here’s another good one from one of the more prominent console repair shops in the US:
The key is to heat up the board to just under the melting point. Then carefully use hot air on the part. The process for an experienced tech should take about ten minutes. So go slow.
Actually the BGA reballer would have made short work of this. This is what it was born to do. We just didn’t know how to work it LOL.
Yeah, based on those videos it looks like it comes off without too much difficulty. A decent hot air station and some good flux should make quick work of it. I don’t have a dedicated pre-heater, so I usually just pull the nozzle off my hot air station and run it over the board for a few minutes to get it toasty. My station goes up to 480°c, but I’ve never needed to turn it up nearly that high. I could take a crack at it if you want.
@james.a.seymour
Well, maybe if all the rework tools in Electronics didn’t keep breaking…cheap chinese junk.
I don’t think I trust those combo stations any more, either. One tool or the other keeps failing.
That would be phenomenal if you’re willing and able. I’ve called dozens of businesses around town and it’s as if no one does that as part of their business here. Multiple people pointed me to Alex at Notebook Mechanix, as he has a lengthy history repairing CPUs and other board-level components. Unfortunately, he declined when he realized I wasn’t talking about repairing a computer motherboard.
I’m new to this forum. It doesn’t appear to have a private message option. How do we proceed forward? I’m on the west side of town and can come to you wherever.
That’s normal, it’s an anti-spam feature. The specific requirements to get to the next level are 10 minutes of reading, 30 posts read, and 5 topics opened, so if you just spend a little time reading a few different topics it’ll unlock pretty quickly. Looks like you’ve already hit all of the requirements other than number of posts read.
As for the board work, I don’t see why it would matter that it isn’t a computer motherboard; rework is rework, more or less. I could see not wanting to do diagnostics on machine you aren’t familiar with, but if it’s just swapping a component it shouldn’t make much difference.
