By concentrating heat onto the part, the BGA avoids excessive temperature. 

Recently, a customer asked if we could remove a valuable BGA from an existing circuit card assembly. About 1,000 of these BGAs could be removed. Our customer is a reclamation company, and they planned to resell the BGAs, which could fetch upwards of $400 each because of the current chip shortage.

The BGA itself is an older version of the Intel Altera family of products (FIGURE 1). While deemed obsolete by the manufacturer, the part is certainly usable, and due to the chip shortage, our customer might understandably obtain a good price for these older parts, which can be used as replacements for newer models.

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