Assembly Automation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a cost effective ball grid array (BGA) workcell for solder ball attachment.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents the construction of a low-cost high-efficiency automatic ball attachment workcell. In fact, it is an economical means of simultaneous placement of all solder balls on BGA substrates containing multiple BGA units as well as singulated substrates. Common industry problems such as the effect of static charges, the solder ball oxidation, the missing ball, the extra ball, the ball alignment, the deformed ball and, etc. will be addressed and critical issues affecting yield will also be discussed in this paper.

Findings – BGA is a popular integrated circuit packaging that is often applied in laptop computers and other handheld electronic devices for the provision of a high-connection count in a relatively small area. However, the cost of a market available BGA solder ball attachment workcell is very expensive and the flexibility in fitting various customized process is usually low.

Originality/value – The developed workcell cost is about half of the market available machines with similar specifications; the yield achieved is within three sigma confidence interval with competitive output rate. The maintenance and troubleshooting are easy since the machine was developed by the in-house engineering team.