| April 24, 2013
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Oops! Somebody goofed. Happens all the time.
Simple mistakes are magnified on complex, expensive assemblies. A routing miscommunication resulted in a significant problem for a customer. The circuit traces for connectors on the left side were supposed to route to the connectors on the right side. Unfortunately the opposite was true.
If the circuit board connectors were not rewired and the mating daughter board was plugged in, sparks would fly! Do to time considerations re-manufacture was not viable option.
There were a few options considered. One option was to manufacture a custom adapter card that included the rewired circuit traces. The conductors could have been mounted to the adapter card and the card could have been soldered to the main circuit board similar to a leadless chip ...
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Manufacturers solder tens of thousands of BGA components every day. Most of this activity occurs in the flow of manufacturing and some during rework. Most BGA placement is performed flawlessly. On the other hand, industry's dynamic forces constantly push the envelope. Occasionally things go wrong.
Circuit board designers are continuously looking for more real-estate. That can be as difficult as looking for apartments in Manhattan, but that doesn't stop them from searching.
It used to be that BGA pads were always routed out to a via on the same side of the board as the pad. Now more and more designers are trying to reclaim that space by using the BGA pad itself as a via.
There are occasions when the via in pad solution causes disruptions in BGA placement. There are a number of different issues that are addressed on various technical forums, but today we'll only address one; filled vias ...
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Quite often, a rework department is confronted with the task of cutting, rather than establishing, connections. Often called conductor cuts or circuit cuts, such procedures involve breaking connections both on the surface of the circuit board as well as internally.
Why do these cuts need to be made? Why do connections on or in boards need to be severed? Design changes drive these types of procedures that may, for example, make the function of a circuit assembly more efficient.
Sometimes artwork has not been laid out correctly, and faults that need to be corrected will exist after the board has been manufactured. Tools used for these procedures can include very precise knives, micro drills with ball mills, precision drill systems with end mills and customized ...
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Trivia
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