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We lose money on repairs, sobs penniless Apple, even though we charge y'all a fortune

JohnFen

I'm not really disagreeing with your point here.

It can be effective to bake a PCB to fix a problem if that problem is cold solder joints (although that's the thermal equivalent of trying to fix something mechanical by randomly hitting it with a hammer). But it's not as simple as chucking it into an oven. You have to prepare the board (such as desoldering and removing components that will wilt in the heat), and be reasonably cautious about times and temperatures.

My experience is that you're better off finding and resoldering the specific cold solder joint. If the bad joint is a ball under a BGA chip, then using a hot air gun on that chip is a safer option than baking the entire board (although removing, reballing, and resoldering the entire chip is even better.)

On the other hand, as AvE likes to say, if it's already fucked, why not give it a go? It's not like it matters if you make it even more fucked.

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