Wind turbines are incredible pieces of technology, able to harvest wind energy and deliver it to the power grid without carbon emissions. Their constant development since the first one came online in 1939 mean that the number of megawatts produced per turbine continues to rise as price per megawatt-hour of wind energy continues to fall. Additionally, they can operate in almost any climate to reliably generate energy almost anywhere in the world from Canada to the North Atlantic to parts beyond. While the cold snap that plowed through the American South recently might seem to contradict this fact, in reality the loss of wind power during this weather event is partially a result of tradeoffs made during the design of these specific wind farms (and, of course, the specifics of how Texas operates its power grid, but that’s outside the scope of this article) rather than a failure of the technology itself.

First, building wind turbines on the scale of megawatts isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Purchasing a large turbine from a company like GE, Siemens, or Vestas is a lot like buying a car. A make and model are selected first, and then options are selected for these base models. For example, low but consistent wind speeds demand a larger blade that will rotate at a lower speed whereas areas with higher average wind speeds may be able to get by with smaller and less expensive blades for the same amount of energy production. Another common option for turbines is cold weather packages, which include things like heaters for the control systems, hydraulics, and power electronics, additional insulation in certain areas, and de-icing solutions especially for the turbine blades.

In a location like Texas that rarely sees cold temperatures for very long, it’s understandable that the cold weather packages might be omitted to save money during construction (although some smaller heaters are often included in critical areas to reduce condensation or humidity) but also to save on maintenance as well: every part in a wind turbine has to be maintained. Continuing the car analogy, it’s comparable to someone purchasing a vehicle in a cold climate that didn’t come equipped with air conditioning to save money up front, but also to avoid repair costs when the air conditioning eventually breaks. However, there are other side effects beyond cost to be considered when installing equipment that’s designed to improve a turbine’s operation in cold weather.

Let’s dig into the specifics of how wind turbine equipment is selected for a given wind farm.

Good Design Involves Tradeoffs

Improving a turbine’s ability to operate in cold weather may actually decrease its ability to operate in hot weather, which Texas at least is guaranteed to see during large portions of the year. Everything in a turbine generates heat when operating, from the blade pitching equipment to the gearbox and generator to the power electronics which tie them electrically to the grid. Expelling the waste heat in summer is much more important in these places than preparing them for a few days of cold weather that might not even happen in any given year. Typically this waste heat is expelled by means of radiators and cooling fans, whether they are installed on the gearbox, generator, power converter, or other heat-sensitive equipment, and the settings at which the cooling systems activate (if they exist at all) may not be easy or possible to change.

This brings up another consideration with wind energy in Texas specifically. Wind is plentiful in Texas, so it was among the first places in the US to adopt early versions of grid-scale wind turbines, some of which are still in operation. These turbines are much less configurable than modern versions, and it may not be easy or possible to change the various temperature settings in a turbine. That means that in some cases, cooling fans are active all the time, or the turbines are otherwise permanently configured in a way that makes them ideal for use in hot climates but quickly trip offline in cold weather. Even modern turbines will go offline if the internal temperatures reach a set point well below freezing (typically -30 °C/-22 °F) in order to prevent damage (note that if grid operators are aware of the weather they’ll be able to predict the loss of generation and plan for it), but if cooling systems aren’t configured for the cold, vents are still open, or insulation is lacking, these turbines will not be immune to the effects of the cold either.

Fighiting Ice: Electric Heat and Special Paint; But Not Helicopters

Other aspects of wind turbines that impact their abilities to operate in extreme cold is how they deal with ice, specifically on the turbine blades. Carbon-based electrical heaters on the blades are common way to control ice buildup. 2014 images of the helicopter deicing tests in Sweden shown in the video below went viral during the Texas outage, but this technique is not used in Texas and doesn’t seem to have seen much adoption anywhere due to the expenses involved. (Also considering the need to have a pilot and at least two other workers on-site during icy conditions.) Installing blade heaters caries its own cost and, at least for the time being, may only make economic sense in areas that are expected to deal with cold during a significant portion of the year.

Other options include using thermal cameras to sense ice buildup and shut the turbine down if the ice becomes severe. While all of these methods so far require energy inputs in order to de-ice blades, an innovative product from a wind turbine company called Gamesa is producing paint that naturally prevents ice formation, eliminating the need for expensive energy-intensive deicing solutions.

Another example of a company using paint to try to prevent ice buildup on blades is at a wind farm in Canada where the site has painted some blades black in order to increase the amount of UV light absorbed from the sun, hoping to naturally increase the temperature of the blades without any novel technology or energy-intensive solutions. While this method is not as widespread as other methods, it demonstrates an example of a tradeoff between hot and cold climates: painting blades black in Texas, while there is some evidence that it may reduce bird fatalities, presumably would have major downsides when the long summers rolled around and the blades heated up beyond design tolerances.

Human Resources in Cold Weather

While all of these technological solutions to extreme climates are the subject of any news cycle focused on the downsides of wind energy, one of the most important things about the operation of wind turbines is often glossed over when considering operation outside of their intended climate: the people who maintain them have to also be prepared to live and work in that climate as well. If a turbine trips offline for a routine reason during a snow or ice event, most wind technicians at sites in places like Texas don’t have access to snowplows, snowblowers, or snowmobiles to access the turbines like they might if they were working in northern Quebec. They may not live in areas that regularly plow or salt the roads, making it difficult or unsafe to get to the site or turbines at all. Even if the technicians are doing something simple to improve the turbine’s performance in cold weather, like shutting hatch vents or adding insulation, they still need to get to the turbines.

Further, there are some safety issues with ice buildup on turbines as well, namely that it has to go somewhere when it falls off of the turbines. For that reason, most technicians have strict rules on approaching turbines during ice events to prevent any ice from shedding off of the turbine and onto them or their vehicles. In a cold climate that has de-icing systems, however, this issue can be more controlled and predictable, but in a place like Texas this means that an otherwise fixable turbine might be left offline for a much longer time while technicians wait for safer conditions.

In conclusion, we’d like to note that the recent disaster in Texas was not related to any fundamentals of wind energy itself, but rather to other issues with their isolated power grid and the trend of American infrastructure to be in a general state of disrepair. Wind turbines are perfectly capable of producing energy in some of the most extreme cold environments on the planet, provided they (and their operators) are designed and equipped to handle the climate. In fact, since air density is inversely proportional to temperature, turbines in cold climates can produce more energy for a given wind speed than those in hot climates. We should also give Texas a pat on the back for investing so heavily in wind energy. As of 2019 the state had just shy of 25 GW of wind power capacity, the most by far of any other state, and installed capacity continues to rise rapidly. They have an incredible amount of wind energy available and they have not let it go to waste. But winterizing turbines in hot climates, especially older turbines that aren’t as configurable, is often infeasible both from an economic point-of-view and also because the process of designing any product, whether it’s a small toy or a giant wind farm, requires tradeoffs.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/03/01/wind-turbines-and-ice-how-theyre-tailored-for-specific-climates/

Wind turbines are incredible pieces of technology, able to harvest wind energy and deliver it to the power grid without carbon emissions. Their constant development since the first one came online in 1939 mean that the number of megawatts produced per turbine continues to rise as price per megawatt-hour of wind energy continues to fall. Additionally, they can operate in almost any climate to reliably generate energy almost anywhere in the world from Canada to the North Atlantic to parts beyond. While the cold snap that plowed through the American South recently might seem to contradict this fact, in reality the loss of wind power during this weather event is partially a result of tradeoffs made during the design of these specific wind farms (and, of course, the specifics of how Texas operates its power grid, but that’s outside the scope of this article) rather than a failure of the technology itself.

First, building wind turbines on the scale of megawatts isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Purchasing a large turbine from a company like GE, Siemens, or Vestas is a lot like buying a car. A make and model are selected first, and then options are selected for these base models. For example, low but consistent wind speeds demand a larger blade that will rotate at a lower speed whereas areas with higher average wind speeds may be able to get by with smaller and less expensive blades for the same amount of energy production. Another common option for turbines is cold weather packages, which include things like heaters for the control systems, hydraulics, and power electronics, additional insulation in certain areas, and de-icing solutions especially for the turbine blades.

In a location like Texas that rarely sees cold temperatures for very long, it’s understandable that the cold weather packages might be omitted to save money during construction (although some smaller heaters are often included in critical areas to reduce condensation or humidity) but also to save on maintenance as well: every part in a wind turbine has to be maintained. Continuing the car analogy, it’s comparable to someone purchasing a vehicle in a cold climate that didn’t come equipped with air conditioning to save money up front, but also to avoid repair costs when the air conditioning eventually breaks. However, there are other side effects beyond cost to be considered when installing equipment that’s designed to improve a turbine’s operation in cold weather.

Let’s dig into the specifics of how wind turbine equipment is selected for a given wind farm.

Good Design Involves Tradeoffs

Improving a turbine’s ability to operate in cold weather may actually decrease its ability to operate in hot weather, which Texas at least is guaranteed to see during large portions of the year. Everything in a turbine generates heat when operating, from the blade pitching equipment to the gearbox and generator to the power electronics which tie them electrically to the grid. Expelling the waste heat in summer is much more important in these places than preparing them for a few days of cold weather that might not even happen in any given year. Typically this waste heat is expelled by means of radiators and cooling fans, whether they are installed on the gearbox, generator, power converter, or other heat-sensitive equipment, and the settings at which the cooling systems activate (if they exist at all) may not be easy or possible to change.

This brings up another consideration with wind energy in Texas specifically. Wind is plentiful in Texas, so it was among the first places in the US to adopt early versions of grid-scale wind turbines, some of which are still in operation. These turbines are much less configurable than modern versions, and it may not be easy or possible to change the various temperature settings in a turbine. That means that in some cases, cooling fans are active all the time, or the turbines are otherwise permanently configured in a way that makes them ideal for use in hot climates but quickly trip offline in cold weather. Even modern turbines will go offline if the internal temperatures reach a set point well below freezing (typically -30 °C/-22 °F) in order to prevent damage (note that if grid operators are aware of the weather they’ll be able to predict the loss of generation and plan for it), but if cooling systems aren’t configured for the cold, vents are still open, or insulation is lacking, these turbines will not be immune to the effects of the cold either.

Fighiting Ice: Electric Heat and Special Paint; But Not Helicopters

Other aspects of wind turbines that impact their abilities to operate in extreme cold is how they deal with ice, specifically on the turbine blades. Carbon-based electrical heaters on the blades are common way to control ice buildup. 2014 images of the helicopter deicing tests in Sweden shown in the video below went viral during the Texas outage, but this technique is not used in Texas and doesn’t seem to have seen much adoption anywhere due to the expenses involved. (Also considering the need to have a pilot and at least two other workers on-site during icy conditions.) Installing blade heaters caries its own cost and, at least for the time being, may only make economic sense in areas that are expected to deal with cold during a significant portion of the year.

Other options include using thermal cameras to sense ice buildup and shut the turbine down if the ice becomes severe. While all of these methods so far require energy inputs in order to de-ice blades, an innovative product from a wind turbine company called Gamesa is producing paint that naturally prevents ice formation, eliminating the need for expensive energy-intensive deicing solutions.

Another example of a company using paint to try to prevent ice buildup on blades is at a wind farm in Canada where the site has painted some blades black in order to increase the amount of UV light absorbed from the sun, hoping to naturally increase the temperature of the blades without any novel technology or energy-intensive solutions. While this method is not as widespread as other methods, it demonstrates an example of a tradeoff between hot and cold climates: painting blades black in Texas, while there is some evidence that it may reduce bird fatalities, presumably would have major downsides when the long summers rolled around and the blades heated up beyond design tolerances.

Human Resources in Cold Weather

While all of these technological solutions to extreme climates are the subject of any news cycle focused on the downsides of wind energy, one of the most important things about the operation of wind turbines is often glossed over when considering operation outside of their intended climate: the people who maintain them have to also be prepared to live and work in that climate as well. If a turbine trips offline for a routine reason during a snow or ice event, most wind technicians at sites in places like Texas don’t have access to snowplows, snowblowers, or snowmobiles to access the turbines like they might if they were working in northern Quebec. They may not live in areas that regularly plow or salt the roads, making it difficult or unsafe to get to the site or turbines at all. Even if the technicians are doing something simple to improve the turbine’s performance in cold weather, like shutting hatch vents or adding insulation, they still need to get to the turbines.

Further, there are some safety issues with ice buildup on turbines as well, namely that it has to go somewhere when it falls off of the turbines. For that reason, most technicians have strict rules on approaching turbines during ice events to prevent any ice from shedding off of the turbine and onto them or their vehicles. In a cold climate that has de-icing systems, however, this issue can be more controlled and predictable, but in a place like Texas this means that an otherwise fixable turbine might be left offline for a much longer time while technicians wait for safer conditions.

In conclusion, we’d like to note that the recent disaster in Texas was not related to any fundamentals of wind energy itself, but rather to other issues with their isolated power grid and the trend of American infrastructure to be in a general state of disrepair. Wind turbines are perfectly capable of producing energy in some of the most extreme cold environments on the planet, provided they (and their operators) are designed and equipped to handle the climate. In fact, since air density is inversely proportional to temperature, turbines in cold climates can produce more energy for a given wind speed than those in hot climates. We should also give Texas a pat on the back for investing so heavily in wind energy. As of 2019 the state had just shy of 25 GW of wind power capacity, the most by far of any other state, and installed capacity continues to rise rapidly. They have an incredible amount of wind energy available and they have not let it go to waste. But winterizing turbines in hot climates, especially older turbines that aren’t as configurable, is often infeasible both from an economic point-of-view and also because the process of designing any product, whether it’s a small toy or a giant wind farm, requires tradeoffs.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/03/01/wind-turbines-and-ice-how-theyre-tailored-for-specific-climates/

Resin 3D printers have a significant advantage over filament printers in that they are able to print smaller parts with more fine detail. The main downside is that the resin parts aren’t typically as strong or durable as their filament counterparts. For this reason they’re often used more for small models than for working parts, but [Breaking Taps] wanted to try and improve on the strength of these builds buy adding metal to them through electroplating.

Both copper and nickel coatings are used for these test setups, each with different effects to the resin prints. The nickel adds a dramatic amount of stiffness and the copper seems to increase the amount of strain that the resin part can tolerate — although [Breaking Taps] discusses some issues with this result.

While the results of electroplating resin are encouraging, he notes that it is a cumbersome process. It’s a multi-step ordeal to paint the resin with a special paint which helps the metal to adhere, and then electroplate it. It’s also difficult to ensure an even coating of metal on more complex prints than on the simpler samples he uses in this video.

After everything is said and done, however, if a working part needs to be smaller than a filament printer can produce or needs finer detail, this is a pretty handy way of adding more strength or stiffness to these parts. There’s still some investigating to be done, though, as electroplated filament prints are difficult to test with his setup, but it does show promise. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to print with this amount of precision using metal directly rather than coating plastic with it.

Thanks to [smellsofbikes] for the tip!

source https://hackaday.com/2021/03/01/electroplating-3d-printed-parts-for-great-strength/

Long-time readers may remember one of the occasional Engineering Heroes series that focused on the British engineer, inventor and sometime TV presenter Tim Hunkin, known for his intricate creations, unusual arcade machines, and Secret Life Of Machines TV series’ from the years around 1990. It seems we’re now in for a fresh treat as he’s returning to our screens via YouTube with a new series. The Secret Life Of Components will be his attempt to pass on the accumulated knowledge of a long career that most of us would have given our eyeteeth for.

There will be eight videos in the series which launches on the 4th of March, and judging by the snippets in the preview video below the break he’ll be covering a wide range including springs, adhesives, chains, belts, switches, and much more. His entertaining style and beautifully built working models are guaranteed to make for some very good content while giving a unique view into the workshop of a true master of the craft.

As an appetiser it’s worth reading our profile of Tim Hunkin. It features a visit to his Novelty Automation arcade in London’s Holborn, which should be an essential stop for any travelling Hackaday reader finding themselves in that city.

Thanks [Jeff Del Papa] and others for the tip.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/02/28/tim-hunkin-rides-again-with-the-secret-life-of-components/

Long-time readers may remember one of the occasional Engineering Heroes series that focused on the British engineer, inventor and sometime TV presenter Tim Hunkin, known for his intricate creations, unusual arcade machines, and Secret Life Of Machines TV series’ from the years around 1990. It seems we’re now in for a fresh treat as he’s returning to our screens via YouTube with a new series. The Secret Life Of Components will be his attempt to pass on the accumulated knowledge of a long career that most of us would have given our eyeteeth for.

There will be eight videos in the series which launches on the 4th of March, and judging by the snippets in the preview video below the break he’ll be covering a wide range including springs, adhesives, chains, belts, switches, and much more. His entertaining style and beautifully built working models are guaranteed to make for some very good content while giving a unique view into the workshop of a true master of the craft.

As an appetiser it’s worth reading our profile of Tim Hunkin. It features a visit to his Novelty Automation arcade in London’s Holborn, which should be an essential stop for any travelling Hackaday reader finding themselves in that city.

Thanks [Jeff Del Papa] and others for the tip.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/02/28/tim-hunkin-rides-again-with-the-secret-life-of-components/

GPS technology is a marvel of the modern world. Not only can we reliably locate positions on the planet with remarkable accuracy and relatively inexpensive hardware, but plenty of non-location-based features of the technology are available for other uses as well. GPS can be used for things like time servers, since the satellites require precise timing in order to triangulate a position, and as a result they can also be used for things like this incredibly accurate frequency reference.

This project is what’s known as a GPSDO, or GPS-disciplined oscillator. Typically they use a normal oscillator, like a crystal, and improve its accuracy by pairing it with the timing signal from a GPS satellite. This one is a standalone model built by [Szabolcs Szigeti] who based the build around an STM32 board. The goal of the project was purely educational, as GPSDOs of various types are widely available, but [Szabolcs] was able to build exactly what he wanted into this one including a custom power supply, simple standalone UI, and no distribution amplifier.

The build goes into a good bit of detail on the design and operation of the device, and all of the PCB schematics and source code are available on the projects GitHub page if you want to build your own. There are plenty of other projects out there that make use of GPS-based time for its high accuracy, too, like this one which ties a GPS time standard directly to a Raspberry Pi.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/02/28/reliable-frequency-reference-from-gps/

In an announcement that came as a surprise to few, NASA now says that landing humans on the Moon by 2024 is no longer likely. Acting administrator Steve Jurczyk lays the blame at the feet of Congress, for failing to provide the funds needed for Human Landing Systems development, a critical step needed to meet the aggressive overall timeline. The announcement doesn’t mark the end of the Artemis program; in fact, NASA is continuing to work on a realistic timeline for getting boots back on the lunar surface, and a decision on which of the three submitted proposals for a lunar lander will be further developed should be coming in the next few months. As far as we can see, this is simply an adjustment to the original timeline for a landing, but given the stunning recent success of Perseverance showing just what robots can do, we’d expect pushback from some quarters on the need for human exploration.

The entry-level 3D design market was thrown into considerable turmoil last year when Autodesk changed the licensing terms for its flagship Fusion 360 package. Hobbyists who had been enjoying relatively unfettered access to the powerful suite chafed at the new restrictions, leaving many to threaten to jump ship, apparently without much thought given to the dearth of alternative products. That may be changing now that Dassault Systèmes has announced two new versions of SolidWorks aimed at the maker and student segments. The Makers offer is intended for hobbyists who want to design for benchtop manufacturing methods like 3D-printing. The Students offer is aimed at engineering and design students looking to gain experience with the tools they’ll be expected to have mastered by the time they enter the job market. It looks like the Makers offer will be at least partly contingent on the interest expressed by the community, so you might want to make your feeling know on the subject. If the Makers edition comes to pass in the second half of this year, it will likely target a $99/year price point.

We stumbled upon an interesting YouTube series the other day that stirred the creative juices. We all probably remember the first time we learned about the Mandelbrot set, the fractal number set that looks something like a lumpy kidney bean and continues to do so no matter how far you zoom into it. The image may be complex but the math behind it is simple enough to implement in software that it’s often done as an exercise for CS students and other unfortunates. But implementing a Mandelbrot set generator in logic is possible too, which WildEngineering did in this video series. Rather than implement this as discrete logic gates, he used a neat logic simulator called Digital, which looks like a handy tool to learn all by itself. The Mandelbrot generator concepts are really instructive too, and it sure seems like the next logical step would be to gather the needed 74xx-series chips and start breadboarding. We’d love to give it a whirl ourselves, but won’t be heartbroken if someone beats us to it.

If it sometimes appears that we at Hackaday get a little frustrated with the comments section of the articles we write, rest assured that we know that we have the best readers on the planet, hands down. Where the toxicity of other corners of the Internet is often unbearable, our readers truly do make this a fabulously collaborative environment, on the whole.

In fact, some commenters even go so far as to basically write their own articles in response to one of ours, and when that happens we like to point it out. The article that spawned the effort was Kristina Panos’ excellent “What If I Never Make Version Two?”, a recent piece that dips a toe into the psychology of hacking. Peter Walsh picks up on the theme with his Hackaday.io page entitled “The Psychology of Version Two”, which we really enjoyed. After a brief look at the neurochemistry of happiness, Peter dives into some “brain hacks” to assess the need for a version 2. There are some great tips, and we really enjoyed both the original article and Peter’s response.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/02/28/hackaday-links-february-28-2021/

In an announcement that came as a surprise to few, NASA now says that landing humans on the Moon by 2024 is no longer likely. Acting administrator Steve Jurczyk lays the blame at the feet of Congress, for failing to provide the funds needed for Human Landing Systems development, a critical step needed to meet the aggressive overall timeline. The announcement doesn’t mark the end of the Artemis program; in fact, NASA is continuing to work on a realistic timeline for getting boots back on the lunar surface, and a decision on which of the three submitted proposals for a lunar lander will be further developed should be coming in the next few months. As far as we can see, this is simply an adjustment to the original timeline for a landing, but given the stunning recent success of Perseverance showing just what robots can do, we’d expect pushback from some quarters on the need for human exploration.

The entry-level 3D design market was thrown into considerable turmoil last year when Autodesk changed the licensing terms for its flagship Fusion 360 package. Hobbyists who had been enjoying relatively unfettered access to the powerful suite chafed at the new restrictions, leaving many to threaten to jump ship, apparently without much thought given to the dearth of alternative products. That may be changing now that Dassault Systèmes has announced two new versions of SolidWorks aimed at the maker and student segments. The Makers offer is intended for hobbyists who want to design for benchtop manufacturing methods like 3D-printing. The Students offer is aimed at engineering and design students looking to gain experience with the tools they’ll be expected to have mastered by the time they enter the job market. It looks like the Makers offer will be at least partly contingent on the interest expressed by the community, so you might want to make your feeling know on the subject. If the Makers edition comes to pass in the second half of this year, it will likely target a $99/year price point.

We stumbled upon an interesting YouTube series the other day that stirred the creative juices. We all probably remember the first time we learned about the Mandelbrot set, the fractal number set that looks something like a lumpy kidney bean and continues to do so no matter how far you zoom into it. The image may be complex but the math behind it is simple enough to implement in software that it’s often done as an exercise for CS students and other unfortunates. But implementing a Mandelbrot set generator in logic is possible too, which WildEngineering did in this video series. Rather than implement this as discrete logic gates, he used a neat logic simulator called Digital, which looks like a handy tool to learn all by itself. The Mandelbrot generator concepts are really instructive too, and it sure seems like the next logical step would be to gather the needed 74xx-series chips and start breadboarding. We’d love to give it a whirl ourselves, but won’t be heartbroken if someone beats us to it.

If it sometimes appears that we at Hackaday get a little frustrated with the comments section of the articles we write, rest assured that we know that we have the best readers on the planet, hands down. Where the toxicity of other corners of the Internet is often unbearable, our readers truly do make this a fabulously collaborative environment, on the whole.

In fact, some commenters even go so far as to basically write their own articles in response to one of ours, and when that happens we like to point it out. The article that spawned the effort was Kristina Panos’ excellent “What If I Never Make Version Two?”, a recent piece that dips a toe into the psychology of hacking. Peter Walsh picks up on the theme with his Hackaday.io page entitled “The Psychology of Version Two”, which we really enjoyed. After a brief look at the neurochemistry of happiness, Peter dives into some “brain hacks” to assess the need for a version 2. There are some great tips, and we really enjoyed both the original article and Peter’s response.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/02/28/hackaday-links-february-28-2021/

If you want to build cool things these days, you’ve probably had to master surface mount electronics. However, for many people, ball grid array (BGA) is still intimidating. Have a look at [VoltLog’s] video about his techniques for soldering BGA and inspecting that you managed to do it right.

He’s got quite a few tips about things like surface finish and flux selection. It looks easy when he does it. Of course, having a good PCB with good registration markings will help too.

You can’t get a soldering iron under the part, of course. A hot plate provides heat from underneath. A gentle push from a hot air gun will push the solder balls over the melting edge. Even taking the part off the hotplate requires a special technique.

Without seeing the result, how can you know if it was successful? Pros can use an X-ray machine, but you probably don’t have one of those sitting in your shop. [VoltLog] uses a DVM and tests the internal protection diodes that the chip almost certainly has on its pins. However, to do that, you need to put the chip on a bare board. If you were repairing an existing board, the technique wouldn’t be useful since other components on the board would throw the measurements off.

We’ve seen the very patient hand solder wires to BGAs. You can also find more detailed videos and compare other techniques if you want to try them yourself.

source https://hackaday.com/2021/02/28/bga-soldering-and-inspection/