Motherboard Repairs and Microsoldering

ps3 yellow light of death repair reflow reball
Deteriorating solder connections aka cold solder joints are the scourge of modern and retro electronics alike.  Our company works on a regular basis with all kinds of connections including: ball grid arrays (BGAs) , QFPs (traditional surface mounted chips with metal connection legs), through-hole, and surface mount components.  Failure of solder connections is something we see regularly and aside from regular maintenance of your machines is something that’s very difficult to prevent.

Scoping these bad connections and flowing them properly are key to getting the chips to function as originally intended.  Our reflowing process for BGAs has been refined using multiple types of fluxes for varying board types and involves “floating” a chip on a board to confirm full liquid state of the underlying solder.  Reballing is the process of actually removing and chip and replacing the existing solder balls with new ones.  Our reballing techniques can be applied to both the original or the replacement chips if a processor is suspected to be faulty.

The biggest hurdle of motherboard repairs is that its a catch 22 and the only way to fix it is to give it a go.  That being said, we tend to have a very high success rate with our repairs.  ‘quick fix’ youtube repair attempts can greatly hinder our ability to repair your machines.  😉

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