[chbot] Reflowing laptop graphic chips

[Kerry Harpur]

Hi all, I've been having a go at re-flowing graphics chips on laptops over
the last couple of days at work. I thought some of you might be interested
in my results.

Basically the technique is to strip the motherboard back as much as
possible use some thick aluminium foil as a heat shield then carefully use
a heat gun the re-flow the solder. There are plenty of tutorials online and
the technique I used was similar to this one:
http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2011/02/23/fix-laptop-motherboard-with-failed-nvidia-graphics-chip/

Anyway I was a little surprised how little heat was needed to get the
solder flowing, I use a heat gun to remove capacitors from boards and much
more heat is needed for this. Anyway I've uploaded some pics so you can see
the results. http://s1243.photobucket.com/albums/gg559/kayjayharpur/Reflow/


Image one shows the board prior to re-flow, the second after
a successful re-flow and the in the third where I buggered it up by
removing the shield before the board cooled and accidentally brushed some
of the still hot components. So far I've done a couple of laptops and the
first one was successful the second as you can see by the pic not so much.

Kerry
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