Doug, I'll address the issues of BGA's associated with bare boards. In general boards with BGA's are overall not much different than a standard SMT board without. The differences can however give a lot of headaches. You and your process guys need to be familiar with them. Some differences are: BGAs create a spot of very high density on a PCB. Typically a BGA involves a grid of vias on a 50 mil grid our less. This may sometimes make making test fixtures more difficult. BGAs tend to drive up layer count because of the high I/O density in the area of the BGA. BGAs tend to require fine lines (at least on the inners) of 5/5 mil line/space. This is due to the high density. The vias associated with BGAs almost always are 13.5 mil drill or less. Again due to density. The geometry associated with a BGA footprint typically involve a BGA bond pad connected to an adjacent via. Many OEMs require that the adjacent via to a BGA bond pad be filled with soldermask. This is for several reasons. One is to prevent solder wicking up the via and bridging to the BGA bond pad. The other is to prevent heat transfer during post SMT wave operations causing the BGA joint to reflow. Thus a PCB shop needs to know how to plug vias, consistantly. When OEM's do not fill the via with soldermask there is generally a soldermask web between the via and BGA bond pad. This web needs to stick. Other OEMs use a soldermask defined pad, in which the soldermask opening over the BGA copper bond pad is smaller that the BGA bond pad. I call this a soldermask defined pad. I've seen solderability problems with soldermask defined pads occurring for different process reasons. One key to BGA designs is that different customers specify different BGA footprint geometries. Please have you process engineers look at the particular geometry of a given design. They need to review hole/pad locations, how BGA vias are connected to the BGA pad, the general geometry of the footprint, and where the soldermask is. Soldermask issues are generally the major issues with BGA boards. Please note that I am not talking about boards used in a BGA package, but the boards that have BGA packages attached to them using a SMT assembly process. Hope this helps. [log in to unmask] ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: BGA Author: [log in to unmask] at Dell_UNIX Date: 1/10/96 7:33 PM -- [ From: Doug Jeffery * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] -- Question? What does BGA technology mean to board fabricators? Do we have to become solder paste experts and reflow solder again.. I thought we got rid of that problem.....:).... No Seriously, what are the responsibilities at fabrication for creating boards to accept BGA's? Thanks? Doug Jeffery Electrotek..