1

How important is Electroless nickel immersion gold (ENIG) vs normal HASL or hot air solder leveling is?

I'm prototyping a board that has an Spartan 6 FTG256 BGA. I'm trying to get a 4-layer board with min 5-mil trace width, min 5-mil trace spacing board. Partly, I'm asking about ENIG vs. HASL because of cost.

Brian Carlton
  • 13,252
  • 5
  • 43
  • 64
user24628
  • 91
  • 2
  • Sounds like a shopping question to me. – JIm Dearden May 31 '13 at 15:04
  • Re-worded to make it sound less shopping. – Nick Alexeev May 31 '13 at 16:05
  • You should be able to get that part assembled with either board finish. But if you want to be sure, all you need to do is check with your assembly shop. – The Photon May 31 '13 at 16:44
  • @ThePhoton - I think it's an interesting question. It could probably be restated "I'm hoping to hand-assemble a board with a 256 ball BGA device. What solder finish will give me a better chance of success". That would be very on topic. You shouldn't assume the OP is using an assembly house. – Connor Wolf Jun 01 '13 at 07:18
  • I would expect the ENIG finish to be flatter : that could be quite important in maintaining even contact between BGA balls and PCB. –  Jun 01 '13 at 11:35
  • @ConnorWolf, I just assume people aren't totally crazy unless they tell me they are. Anyway if the question is can I hand-assemble BGA, that's already been asked: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/2047/diy-bga-soldering-feasability?rq=1 The answer seems to be, maybe it can be done, but nobody's gonna promise you you can do it. – The Photon Jun 01 '13 at 15:31
  • 1
    @BrianDrummond, ENIG is for sure flatter, but after you lay down solder paste, the difference won't matter any longer. – The Photon Jun 01 '13 at 15:37
  • @ThePhoton - There is a whole community of crazy people who re-ball XBox CPUs and resolder them on youtube, all without x-ray inspection or anything. Apparently they have a pretty good success rate, so I don't know how crazy it really is. – Connor Wolf Jun 02 '13 at 03:06
  • @ConnorWolf, Crazy in a good way, but still crazy. – The Photon Jun 02 '13 at 03:29

0 Answers0