The quality of BGA rework comes down to mechanical accuracy, good materials and thermal control. Not surprisingly, OEMs and EMS providers the world over spend a great deal of time developing thermal profiles for their rework that will guarantee the fastest, safest time to reflow. Creating a profile, however, can be frustrating, time-consuming and expensive.

But it doesn't have to be: some of the world's top OEMs and EMS providers rely on UK company PDR and its Focused Infra-Red (Focused IR) technology to simplify one of electronics manufacturing's riskiest, most demanding and unavoidable tasks.

Eliminating the risk and guesswork from thermal profiling, Focused IR uses Infra-Red light energy to take the board and component to a temperature that will not damage them, yet will melt the solder between them. Roger Gibbs, pioneer of Focused IR technology and co-founder and Managing Director of PDR, explains how it works: We call it passive heat, Focused IR heats the object directly, rather than heating the air around it, so even though there is enough energy to get a component to the right temperature, you can safely put your hand in the beam, even at full power. www.pdr.co.uk