Jeff Liebermann wrote in
:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:44:45 +0100, "Ian Field"
wrote:

***Hot air (electric paint stripper) gun and a stiff paintbush -
perfect for harvesting SMD parts.

Yep, but I don't do it that way. With SMD, the problem is identifying
the parts after they've been removed. I usually just want the active
components anyway. So, I have a hot air desoldering station to remove
the chips individually with the help of some liquid flux. The parts
are then bagged and labeled in paper coin bags. A mess of random SMT
components does me no good when I have to spend hours trying to
identify or find a specific component.

Overall, the small parts are so cheap, that I'm questioning whether
it's even worth salvaging the parts. Certainly for RAM, uP, and
possibly BGA chips. However, it's usually easier, cheaper, and takes
less time to just order the parts from a distributor. Also, I suspect
that I only use maybe 1 part for every 100 parts that I scrap.
Recently, I've gone back to just storing the PCB's, and pulling off
parts as needed.


I would be VERY leery of a BGA "re-used";
I don't believe one can get the inner pads to solder reliably.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com