Will it work?

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As part of my new part time cough job i have to learn Altium ::slight_smile:

So i decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at a UFBGA…

So lets start the betting on if a 2 layer design will work :whistle:

PS - Altium rocks :smiley:

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It is a great tool. If only they had a lite or personal edition at a reasonable cost, it would be great for the average user.

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You are the master. I am sure you can. Running power will probably be the biggest problem, that even if you have things electrically connected, it may end up not working properly. Pay attention to power traces and decoupling caps.

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@ Gus - Yeah, is an interesting exercise.
I have been pouring over the TI best practices docs about the decoupling etc so am very interested to see how it goes…

0.65mm balls are pretty small… :open_mouth:

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If my balls were that small :cry:

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Please stop making Justin feel bad! He does the best he can with his available resources. :smiley:

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Nice work Justin.

I’ve been a user of Altium for many years now and started way back with Protel 99. I got a hooky copy (cough cough) back then and learned how to drive it. :slight_smile: I then got my company at that time to buy into it.

When I started out on my own I bit the bullet and went for it. It’s expensive each year to stay on maintenance but it is worth it to get the fixes and new features. I just wish they would offer a lower cost version without all the FPGA stuff as I don’t use any of that. :frowning:

I see someone talking about small balls. :slight_smile: I got a free PCB ruler from Adafruit the other day and it has a number of footprints. The 0.8mm BGA looks tiny when you see it in real life without the component fitted. When working in the PCB software you don’t really get to feel the size until you either print it full size or get the PCB’s back. I’ve just started a porting project on a Cortex A7 design that is going to use one of these little BGA’s. It will be my first attempt at these and also SDRAM with all that high speed design stuff Altium can do.

PS… If you start doing high speed design, this is a very nice document about it.

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What is the ballpark cost for a single license of Altium?

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Get ready to say WTF. :slight_smile:

It used to be on their website but it depends on your country. Expect around $6K and $1.5K every year to stay on maintenance.

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I was going to say, if you need to ask you don’t want to know. That estimate just reinforces that view

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Wow! :open_mouth:

I guess Eagle will work just fine. . . .

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Nearly there…

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How does one apply solder paste on BGA like this - just with a normal stencil?

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@ mhectorgato - You don’t. Balls on the chip will melt and solder it to the board.

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Thanks for the info!

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That’s why you have this sort of kit to play with if you do your own in the reflow oven and mess it up :slight_smile:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BGA-Kit-Reballing-Station-PS3-Stencil-Solders-tool-/251442126842?pt=UK_BOI_Industrial_Supply_Material_Handling_ET&hash=item3a8b1e5ffa

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Or be like me and use other peoples toys :whistle:

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Very cool. Is that about 1" square?

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@ skeller - yup 1" square with a STM32F427IIH6

Next week it’s out with the tweezers and hot glue gun ::slight_smile:

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Was AC/DC talking about solder balls here as they don’t sound very small?

You’ll never think of solder balls the same again…

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