Homebrew PCBs

Thanks to all for the useful suggestions. Unfortunately I'm stuck 
with BGAs for the FPGAs I want.

 Mark: I don't need to route all pins, only about 100 so I only need 
to route the outermost rows.

 Norm and timbomcnuckle: thanks for the links, I will take a look at 
them.

 Leon: I thought about having them done professionally but all the 
quotes I got were like $500 for one board. The thing is I'll 
probably need 2-3 iterations to make my design work ... quite a lot 
of money for a hobby. The equipment is not expensive though (the hot 
air stations are Chinese).
 If you know a place where I can get a resonable price, please let 
me know. It might be just that they solder the BGAs (1-2 per board) 
and I would manually solder the rest.
 
 Right now I'm leaning towards getting a Chinese hot air station AND 
getting a toaster oven to "upgrade" to a reflow oven.

 Any more suggestions, please keep them coming. Probably other 
members wanted at some point to use BGAs but stopped because they 
thought it would be too difficult.




--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Mark Brueggemann <qrq_cw@...> 
wrote:
>
> 
> --- pgdion1 <pgdion1@...> wrote:
> 
>  "electronut" <electronut@ wrote:
> 
> > > Recently, I started making electronic circuits as a hobby and 
now
> > > I want to do more complex stuff like FPGAs.
> > > For that I need to solder BGAs. I'm considering buying a hot 
air 
> > > rework station. 
> 
> Never mind getting them soldered down, it's getting a PWB laid
> out that's the PITA.  Commercial board houses do it all the time
> but I can't think of any homebrew process that you coud get
> all those nets routed out on a couple layers.
> 
> 
> 
> Mark K5LXP
> Albuquerque, NM
>