Is optical alignment necessary?

I am curious about messing around with replacing CPU sockets on motherboards and MCP/PCH on logic boards. Also being able to do GPUs if there is ever a good source of chips would be nice. Im looking for a beginner rework station to practice and mess around on. Is it pretty much necessary to have the split vision optical alignment like some of the multi thousand dollar stations; or will a station like the Honton HTR-490 be good enough for most applications?
 

dukefawks

Administrator
I just carefully scratch the position of the chip on the board.
Don't buy a cheap rework station it will only destroy boards and frustrate you. Spend at least $800 on something decent.
 

dukefawks

Administrator
The 490 should do the job, but really GPU replacement is no viable business with no source of good chips anymore.
 

dukefawks

Administrator
Once my stock of 0810005 runs out it is also game over here. I see no new chips coming for at least another 6 months. AMD is not making them till at least April 2018. Then they have to go through all the Chinese, so we are looking at summer 2018 before new 0810005 can maybe be found.
 

Nick

New member
yeh. i sold my rework station for a better scope and a new hot air station. i am gradually phasing out laptops and apple stuff the more i get into industrial electronics. Will probably end up accepting only easier repairs and forgetting about wasting hours on rabbit holes or big BGAs chips
 

ALB-Repairs

Member
To answer the question in hand, No its not necessary, it can be useful. I have had a shuttlesttar sp360c, and am now running a BIRD8888 with the hot air top heater. Get a good inspection camera and sidfe mount it to view the balls. when a BGA site is cleaned correctly it should be easy to tell when the new chip is alinged, it will almost lock into place due to the mask surrounding the pads.



Saying that i would be the first one to admin when im not paying full attention there is a small chance ill have misaligned it.
 
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