BGA Rework Station for IC

First of all a BGA rework station is designed to rework BGA chips. These are Ball Grid Array chips which when removed have what appear to be small balls of solder under them. This is how they are connected. The workstation is designed to heat up the entire chip which will melt the small balls of solder under them in order to make the connection. There are times when these connections fail which is why a "re-flow" is done.

Most other ICs are just standard SMD (Surface Mounted Devices) which are best handled with either hot air or direct use of a soldering iron and tip.

Either type of work requires some practice and the correct equipment. With a microscope, correct equipment and some practice, any size component can be replaced. I have replaced resistors and capacitors about the size of the following period "." with no problems.

Regarding replacing ICs like the tristar, use hot air. Watch some of the youtube videos to get the general techniques, and practice with a dead device. Practice is absolutely required.

Hope this helps,

Dan

If you’re looking to spend money on a machine to assist with BGA Rework on iPhones I would suggest taking a look at a CNC Mill as it will cut out the chip you need to replace along with any underfill that was present. Obviously, you lose the chip, but if it’s a situation where Touch IC or Audio IC need to be replaced then it can be more reliable than heat. Additionally, the more dense components before especially with the designs Apple has been using recently the more likely there are to be issues with overflow heating where while heating the board to resolve one specific issue you actually introduce a problem in a nearby component.