How to remove surface mount SMD QFP packages from a PCB using ChipQuik low melting point alloy solder.
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18:34 “Be careful if you've got nearby passives of course.” 18:40 Desolders C8. :D
LMAO
LOL
hellterminator RIP C8
LOL that escalated quickly..
Lol that's why an engineer shouldn't do a technician's job!
Greetings from Russia. We have a popular method: Take Wood's metal (~ 42 % lead, ~ 40 % bismuth, ~ 9 % tin, ~ 9 % cadmium. Melting point is 68°C) or Rose's metal (~32 % lead, ~ 50 % bismuth, ~ 18 % tin by weight. Melting point is 95°C) Rose is more popular, since it does not contain cadmium and is less toxic. Apply at 400-450 degrees on lead-free alloy So you get an alloy with a melting point of about 110 degrees. Sometimes it is even inappropriate to heat the part in addition, it falls out by itself. After, MANDATORY remove the resulting alloy from the place of soldering, it is brittle and fusible. Thus it is possible e.g. SO8 desoldering chip without hot air. Chip Quik SMD Removal Kit for poor :-)
Interesting. I'd bet that by slightly altering the amounts of ingredients, you could get the best alloy. That's probably what this patented stuff is.
@@PunakiviAddikti Maybe. But what is the point of changing something, if 100 grams of rose alloy costs $ 5.
@@Kriakoziabr I mean refine the alloy to the point of perfection, which is probably what the patented commercial stuff is.
Do you need to apply vodka on the technician in order to function?
Thanks for this valuable info, not easy to find info on these things
C8 is the most famous component on board
LOL!!
?
I see what you did there 😁✌️
no! not the C8!😭
Its the leftover stuff from the T-1000. So it must be expensive.
btw, you can re use the chipquik balls! just use a brush dipped in flux, move into 1 big ball to re-use (with flux of course)
This stuff is amazing! I use it mainly to remove ribbon cables that are hot bar soldered directly to the board. Have not lifted a pad since!
Not bad at all, but the cost is astronomical!
12:46 Made in Mexico flips the chip => TAIWAN
After OEM sticker... You never know the truth xD
The sticker might be where it was assembled, the rest of the PCB has stuff all over it so the chip would be the best place to put it, unlikely they would use a sticker on the chip to show where that chip was made.
Poor C8.
Its excellent in any workshop scenario,it removes not only chips but those nasty TO3's,transformers,coils or whatever do not desolder easily from thick pcb's.Very handy.You can use much less after some practice,retrievable bits can be used again and its all at low temperatures.GREAT.
The composition: 49% Bismuth, 18% Lead, 12% Tin, 21% Indium. This makes a eutectic alloy that melts at 58°C.
I love this stuff. Been using it since the late 90's.
How can you patent an alloy? At what point does another alloy violate the patent? If it has like 5% iron, 6% antimony and 89% other stuff for example and you manufacture an alloy with 5.2% iron, 5.8% antimony and 89% other stuff, would that be considered a violation? At what point does the proportion of constituent metals get diverse enough to render it "different" from a patented alloy, and who defines this limit?
Marc Dudlee the patent system is screwed-up. they shouldn't be even doing software patents. since its author work. i.e copyrighted
they patent compounds found in plants nowaday... soon water and air will be copyrighted. Patents are a anti-competition tool used by big industries
Well I suppose you could also argue what's the point in creating anything new if you can't patent it at least for a little while. If an alloy didn't exist and someone put time, effort and a pile of money into discovering a new alloy why shouldn't they be allowed to patent it?
David Hughes I agree with that 100%, what I'm worried about is the scope of the patent and how it is defined. I've no problem with the principle of patents so long as they're not abused and alloys seem to be something that can be problematic if the definition of the alloy in the patent is too loose.,
Has anyone looked up the patent? It would be interesting to read what they actually patented. Usually, in these kinds of patents, the actual alloy or mixture etc isn't patented at all. But rather the manufacturing methods and possibly tools used to mix them together.
the trick is to melt the original solder so the two metals mix, and then after you can heat it up much quicker, and this combined with a hot air gun is amazing. there are tons of other "low melt" solder options, all at much lower price points
links? or name of brands?
Yes and you don't need to drown it in solder like he did, either
Ah, thanks for that. Cadmium is a bit of a surprise. Sometimes used in wires to improve the strength.
seriously thats one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Dave: "I didnt have any ChipQuick..." ChipQuick: "Send Dave some free ChipQuick" Must be nice to be Dave.
Great vid and thank you for the links to your other soldering vids at the end =P
It also works well for multi-layer board through hole desoldering as well, if you don't have a vacuum desoldering gun. Even the cheap solder suckers have trouble with that.
I can vouch that this stuff works great. I had to desolder a 128 pin ultra fine pitch QFP from a donor board, clean it up, and reuse the thing on another board. I did it all without any damage to the pads or chip itself. And it was my first time using the stuff. So in the right hands, this stuff is worth every penny.
Completely agree. So many people moaning about the price. If it's too expensive for your tastes - fine - don't buy it. But for those of us who want a quick easy and painless way to remove IC's or other parts, this stuff is magic. Expensive, yes, but then you are not doing your daily soldering with this stuff, only removal work, and you can save up the balls left over and re-use them on the next job, so if you save what you use, you can re-apply it to another job later and make it do twice the work that was intended of it, making it even more worth the cash. Dave was putting WAY too much on in this video, but that was only cos he had never used it before. When you have had a little practise, you can get the stuff to bridge IC pins without using anywhere near the length that Dave was feeding in there in the video, but as I say - he had not used it before. VERY useful stuff, and I would never let my workshop run out of this stuff.
agreed. i bridge with 60/40 first then add dabs and it lasts a long time.
@18:40 What happened to C8!? :-P
Called it!
+Marc Jacobi it's called hollywood... :)
Farewell, C8!
He's dead, jim -yoda kzhead.info/sun/ZsaFl7WkgmWenGw/bejne.html
need more fine tip
ChipQuik can also be useful for thru-hole repairs on multi-layer boards. With internal power and ground planes (and moron cad jockeys who neglect thermal reliefs), it can be next to impossible to remove snap-in caps and jack connectors without pulling the thru hole out with the component, further damaging an otherwise repairable board. Sometimes you just can't get heat into the solder joint faster than the power plane takes it away without burning the PCB, preheating or no. After removing excess solder with solder wick, a bit of ChipQuik and gentle wiggling makes it possible to pull the component out. Another use is getting all the lead-free solder out of smaller multilayer thru-holes. Occasionally you run into a thru-hole where the solder next to the power layer just refuses to melt. Apply a bit of ChipQuik to the pad, heat up a resistor lead with your iron, and insert it into the blob of solder. The lead pushes through the hole, and mixes the higer temp lead free solder with the alloy. It's then easy to melt all the way through the hole, and remove all the solder. ChipQuik is a great thing to have in an Altoids tin in your toolbox. After a bit of practice, you'd be surprised how long it lasts. And if you clean it off well with solder wick, any remaining residue tinned on the pads won't significantly change the composition of the new solder joint enough to cause a problem.
Just used it to change my first HDMI Port... Good Stuff!!
I've done the same by purchasing a small ingot of CerroBend 158 (used as a filler when bending thinwall tubing), filing off some to get it to powder form. I then take the powder and pack it around the pins of the QFP and then, from the underside of the board, use a 150W PAR-38 incandescent spotlamp to heat the area. The board heats evenly, the alloy liquifies and the QFP slides right off. No iron involved. Using the PAR38 as a heat source and a toothbrush, the board and chip clean up nicely. CB (now CS) 158 costs about $25 for a one-pound ingot. If you have a friend who works in radiology, you can sometimes get the stuff from them as it's also used as Xray shielding for selective radiotherapy.
nice imma try that. got a lot of asics to desolder
It depends from the pcb structure also,if has ground plain layers and heat transfer zones the heat dissipates rapidly and not stays in the melted solder.
@18:45, say bye bye to C8
Great video, Dave!
This is heaven for use with a hot air iron, just lower the temp, no stress for the chip and little components around will not get unsolder. Since it's such a low temp, maybe you can even use a fiber brush to brush away the solder that is left on tracks.
This stuff is similar to Cerrosafe except with a bit lower melting temperature. It is an alloy of Bismuth, Lead, and Tin. The way it melts and crystalizes as it turns back to solid is very similar. There is a company (CsAlloys) that adds some Indium to the alloy and has the melting temperature at (coincidentally) the exact same as this stuff 58°C or 136°F. I've used Cerrosafe to get a casting of the chambers of my handguns for reloading purposes. It costs about $20 USD for a 1/2 lb ingot.
That's pretty impressive! I took a TDA2003V out of my CB last night. It has 5 pins and was a real headache to get out.
Dave, i've used the smaller and larger air nozzles with a 858D to remove a 304-pin QFP, worked a treat! (Smaller ones if you only need to heat up the pins, the larger ones i use if there's a freaking thermal pad)
I'm actually wondering, do those thermal pads sometimes go all the way through the PCB layers to form one solid heatsink?
I wonder how well it works if the chip has a contact point on the underside. (grounding or thermal...) I assume it would get to it a little bit and begin displacing solder. I might have to pick some of this up to find out!
Hi Dave can you do a demo about Huntron Tracker for board repair, thanks for all your videos, very useful!
Shame about cap C8 being dragged to its death. Brilliant tutorials as always, keep them up.
lol watch for passive and then removed C8. great work love the show
To be safe I would use Kapton heat resistant tape around all the other surface mounted circuits to prevent that chip quick from rolling over to those areas.
Very nice Idea to remove chip with soldering iron 👌👍
That looks useful, I wonder if you could remove QFP DRMos with it that has thermal pads under it. You would basically heat the IC to 220 degrees C and then the thermal pads would also desolder.
I'll check the RoHS compliance. On the other side, Im asking about reworking if this alloy can cause reliability problems since it breaks when bending and shows to be fragile and resting alloy in the pads can cause "micro-fissures if they re .submitted to mechanical stress and high frequency mechanical vibrations... (I don't know, this is an hypothesis)
according to the MSDS on digikey (product-detail/en/SMD1/SMD1-ND/304148) the proportions are slightly different, and the Cadmium is replaced by Indium.
great video, you sure the temperature of the iron wasn't too low for the chip quick to melt the existing solder?
from an Amazon page (B+D enterprises): The composition is (Tin 12%, Lead 18%, Bismuth 49%, Indium 21%). The lead free ChipQuik version is the SMD1NL.
It says tin, lead, bismuth, *indium* on the datasheet I found on Farnell. I don't imagine cadmium would be legal for sale in many parts of the world. Presumably it's the newer version of it if the old one did contain cadmium. Percentages are: Sn12, Pb18, Bi49, In21.
I use a low melt alloy comprised of bismuth, tin, lead and cadmium. It melts at around 158F. A one pound ingot cost me $10 on eBay two years ago. I just apply some flux and melt some of the alloy onto the iron tip, or if I'm removing something like a MOSFET or IGBT then I'll just hold it above the component and melt a few drops. Maybe it's not as convenient as something in wire form, but It's cheap and very effective. Also, I know cadmium is bad so I do plan on trying something without it soon.
For the smaller chip at 18:00, I can remove it with ordinary solder and flux...you just need to be quick moving around it to keep it molten...
One can also use Rose's metal which costs around USD 14 inc shipping for 75g. from ebay
Could probably reuse it, but it would surely get more impure each time, and the melting point would get higher.
I'm a train wreck at removing SMD chips so could certainly do with some of this.
Pre-warming to the board to 40 deg C would reduce thermal shock to the chips, may improve the molten working time too. The old way of doing that was a halogen encapsulated bulb (the ones with a flat "lens face" over the main envelope and reflector) under the board mounted facing upwards and maybe 100mm from the board underside. - fed gently to produce low heat from a variable supply to give slight warmth to the back of the board for a minutes or two. Don't melt things on the other side!
Hi mate I enjoyed your video a lot now I'm gonna have my first attempt as well thank you so much
Dave, do it again but instead of using all chip quick, bridge evverything with 60/40 first then add little dabs about every 2-3 pins distance and let it mix in. Ive had the same bit for a few months now by using that method.
I've seen it as an anti-corrosion coating on mil-spec connectors, for use in environments with lots of salts present.
I have a powerful de-solder gun with custom trigger for through-hole work. Good for sucking up big excess too. You need to make dead certain that they are before you pull the trigger if you know what I mean.
This is useful for removing faulty bad components. I would not use it to remove components you want to salvage to use on another board as a replacement part. In this situation i would highly recommend the proper equipment. There are situations where this stuff is prefered over a rework station. Yesterday I had to remove a broke flat flex connector from a pcb which was highly populated on both sides with small surface mount components and BGA chips. I did not want to take the chance of dismounting the other components so my rework station was out of the question. I pulled the ChipQuic out my tool box added some flux and the connector came off in less than 2 minutes with no damage to the pcb.
Indium or Bisphmut alloy. Can get similar result adding 60/40 regular solder and flux and using a hot air gun.
amazing, never seen smd before, need the tools , heat gun, jigs, adjustable iron
That's pretty impressive!
Great video! I have a simple question. First I do not know what I am talking about at all, so please bare with me:-) Would it not be possible to just use the soldering wig? You place the soldering wig on top of the pins and hold the soldering wig, totally still, then you are moving your iron on top of the soldering wig to get the solder to be absorbed, one side at a time, and when it is absorbed, you lift the chip?
Awesome! at timestamp 12:00 it looks like the four 'blobs' could have been flipped off clean by letting it dry a few seconds, and slapped the PCB upside down along that black connector on the side. Or did you want to demonstrate other things?
There seems to be some confusion among the commenters here about what a patent is. There is no secret. The whole point of patents is to be able to disclose information that you would otherwise keep as a trade secret. US patent number 5326016 A. "18% tin, 28% lead, 11% cadmium and 43% bismuth"
I use chip quik since 2 years. It is the best way for desold SMD chips without special equipment. Really!
The chipquick 63/37 .8mm solder is my favorite, didn't know their name was ubiquitous with SMD removal alloys.
I know this is a pretty standard way to desolder SMD IC's but couldn't shorting all the pins be a problem if there is a capacitor in the internal design of the IC which is not discharged? You could be sending high voltage back into all the other pins.
Damn that stuff looks good. I'm really tempted to buy some now.
I got an alloy here that melts at 62C. It is not made for soldering but the composition could be similar... It's made of Indium Bismut and Tin.
bismuth ... the least toxic of 4 very seriously toxic metals ... : "Of the heavy metals including lead, mercury, arsenic, and bismuth, it is the latter whose salts are relatively the least toxic." journals.lww.com/em-news/Fulltext/2001/04000/Bismuth_Toxicity,_Often_Mild,_Can_Result_in_Severe.12.aspx
Thank you so much I will buy it.
Thank you so much.
Acording to its patent the allow is: Sn42/Bi57.6/Ag0.4 or Sn96.5/Ag3.0/Cu0.5 they have both listed
+Jaime Cernuda 42/58 is just low-temp solder. 96.5/3/.5 is this.
+TwitchingDan Sn96.5/Ag3.0/Cu0.5 is regular lead-free solder.
***** All my regular is 60/40 or 42/58. I've never seen 96.5/3/.5 on normal solder.
TwitchingDan Regular *lead-free* solder.
***** 18/64/14/4 Sn-Ag-Cu-Zn is the lead free I have. Hmm.
At 10% cadmium, wood's metal isn't the greatest choice. Is Gallium metal an effective replacement? I know that it amalgamates with Al, but have no idea how it reacts with Sn/Pb solder.
I used this stuff for years repairing consumer electronics. I still have a tube of it .. this is a must have in your kit.
Good video. Thank you.
Cool stuff!
"far too easy" C8: "wtf you just say?"
you don't need the special QFP hot-air nozzles - just use a normal 5-10mm one and move it around the outline.
Or just take the entire nozzle off and use it wide mode
I would imagine this would absolutely make the surface mount joints more brittle, leading to the notorious failues of broken connections on surface mount chips (especially GPUs in laptops), where board flexing is common in normal use.
Well, you would clean up the residual ChipQuik with a desoldering braid and lots of flux, whatever's left is negligible as it mixes together with fresh new solder.
Yes it works , wonderful
blimey! interesting video. noticed the damaged pad at pin ~35 before you pointed it out :D
It's like Terminator 2! XD
Worked great, except for the two lifted pads and burnt spot on the PCB! I'll stick with my hot-air pencil, thanks.
I've seen this kind of alloy before, it could either be gallium or indium. Indium being very popular around my area.
It seems likely to be Cerrolow 136 (49% Bi, 21% In, 18% Pb, 12% Sn), from the information I can find. The melting point matches, though the MSDS for ChipQuik's non-lead-free alloy (which is the one that has a 58° melting point) seems to imply that it contains silver and antimony, which Cerrolow 136 does not. However, the only information on silver and antimony is stating the hazards of said metals and that "Product contains one or more of these metallic elements in varying percentages", so it might just be unmodified Cerrolow 136.
I also like the solder pump better than solder wick, I find it cleaner, but with a solder pump there is a larger risk of accidentally damaging very small traces.
Great Video, Thank's!
I was left wondering if this paste is useful with the heat gun. My gut tells me that you can use the gun at a much lower temperature and melt onl the component where you applied the chipquik
they consist of an alloy containing gallium and indium, pure gallium has a melting point of approx. 30 ° C however, caution is advised with gallium, because it destroys aluminum alloys
It's made of some Galium or Indium alloy, which are metals that melt in your hand.
Considering that it's expensive, can the solder blobs be reused for desoldering another ICs? Or does it get too impure?
Its nothing special its just gallium mixed with normal solder, The Gallium has a melting temp of around 30c mix that with a little normal solder to push up the melting temp then form it into a wire and bam you have ChipQuik. Real simple to make
Also explains the Price. Gallium seems to be around 300$/kg
I actually suspect it's essentially Field's metal or Cerrolow 136. I just bought an ingot of Wood's metal which will work just as well as these. Unlike them, it contains Cadmium though, which may spook some people.
He says it melts at 58° C. That's the exact melting point of Field's metal. 49% bismuth, 18% tin, 12% lead and 21% indium.
urdnal This is probably going to soubd stupid but how are you planning to use an ingot for desoldering? Are you going to cut stick-like pieces?
That was my thought...unless you want to "chef" that ingot into julian carrot slivers...or have an extruder handy(well done if you do) then this is the best option. Frankly, I would use this on samsung phones! I bricked my old phone because the stupid power connector, and battery terminal are press fit as well as soldered. This stuff would have saved my old phone!! My new phone was way more expensive than 16$ too...If the solder was nice and fluid, then I would not have accidentally pulled off the pad when I was fighting with the press fit part.
Hi, i have a question about this one. If i used it to desolder a chip of mine, will it affect the ability to resolder the chip in the future? And what do i need to know the most, before using this one carefully?
Thanks bro 👍
Neat stuff. For cleaning the solder alloy off pads, I've also found that the isopropol wipes (or cotton swaps) actually works really well, significantly better than solder wick. Heating the alloy-covered pad up with the iron at low temp and using a cotton swab I've gotten gold-plated pads cleaned up enough to look just about as good as new.
Great video - can the spent ChipQuik be re used? @ 12:54 Did Taiwan merge with Mexico??
Looks like some kind of gallium based alloy which make the metals it touches brittle after a while, if that's the case its a really bad idea, i wouldn't use this any of this stuff without checking whats in it
good demo, though it has to be said you need to really clean off the chip quik, as that blob demonstrates its very crystaline and can behave like a dry joint.
The alloy is probably woods metal which contains cadmium,bismuth,lead and tin.The type we used at work had a melting point of 70c.
BRATWURST1 Would they be using very toxic cadmium in a product like this?
I’m impressed! This stuff must really be good if a guy like you can use it successfully.
Would it be better to use a 3-pass method to avoid desoldering other parts perhaps? Pass 1: apply ChipQuick solder at the lowest possible temperature, so the iron is too cool to desolder anything. Pass 2: reheat the applied ChipQuick at about 300 degrees to mix it with the original solder. You're only using one hand here, and there's no time pressure, so you should be able to move the iron more accurately and carefully this time. Pass 3: use hot air gun at a medium temperature to heat the chip on all sides and lift it off. Hot enough to melt ChipQuick, but again don't allow it to desolder other parts. It's very hard to move accurately when you have to work the iron on all four sides and try to pull off the chip at the same time.
That Blu-Tak is REALLY blue! Nothing like the UK one.
Ahh! Thanks. I was not aware of that.
I reach late to this discussion but any way: about the alloy used, by reading the MSDS ( or SDS) sheets of the product, you can get a clue about it's composition, in this case It uses tin, silver, bismuth, antimonium, indium and copper. About patents covering known alloys, the patents office can issue a patente if, and paste from the article I've read: "For example, an alloy composition with specified levels of alloying additions or a compound having a particular chemical formula may be sufficiently new and different to warrant patent coverage. However, the possibilities do not end there. Although a particular alloy composition or chemical compound may be known, the alloy or compound may possess some new characteristic or property. This is particularly true when it comes to metal alloys. Alloys containing a new type of metallic phase or combination of phases may be patentable. The microstructure of an alloy may be sufficiently new and different. For instance, an amorphous microstructure may be patentable, where only the crystalline form of an alloy was known before. Controlled crystal grain size or orientation may represent patentable features in some cases." www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-0004.html