abpho, Charles,

Thanks.

Chris,

The pads are on 100 micron pitch I believe (at home now and can't verify by asking someone). We have some that were on 75 micron pitch, but don't think these are images of those chips.

Here's a couple of highly cropped images of good solder balls. Note the small dimples at the top of the solder balls, this is the result of a wafer/chip probing technique to evaluate the chip performance. Polyimide membrane probes are developed that make electrical contact will all the solder balls,...

Yousef, Thanks. Steve, The ones with wirebonds are mounted in QFN packages, the ones with solder balls will be mounted face down onto a substrate. When in high quantity production the chips are usually encased in plastic, but some of the high performance processors are mounted in special packages th...

Gem, I got 4 of the clip on Ikea LEDS, and using all 4. I may try another level of diffusion in addition to the stryrofoam cup. The light distribution isn't as uniform as the dual tents, but doesn't require the complex setup either!! The dual tents loose lots of light which is another drawback. Now ...

NikonUser, Those are superb images!! The detail and color are stunning!! I have yet to move past 10X, so this is a real treat to see such quality at these higher magnifications. I noted you use a D610, do you have any issues with it missing a remote trigger now and then? My D800 and D800E both do th...

Thanks Gem. That must have been fun reflowing those chips on the Xbox!! Hopefully you were successful and now a hero to your Niece!!

Here's a crop of a crop to get this to fit within the upload limit. This was taken with the single tent configuration, strobes and a styrofoam cup over the subject. Note the heavy wirebond shadows on the chip edges.

Rik, I could not get Lightroom to compress this image to 300KB, so I cropped it into 3 separate images, but at least I got them to upload!! This is a chip I found in our lab trash that has mangled solder balls that have been severely oxidized. A good chip would have shinny solder balls that look lik...

Gem,

Those are really nice, love the colors. I am trying to use the IKEA LED lamps too. Using a styrofoam cup surrounding the subject as a diffuser. The Lamps are good deal for $15 IMO.

Mike

Steve, Thanks, and yes the light blink in the house!! When the strobes fire they all recharge at the same time, which causes the lights to slightly dim! Here's the image I posted on your thread. http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/3595_Cornell_PPM_1_ULR_1.jpg I can't seem to post other ima...

Rik, I did do some retouching, sorry if was misleading on this. However it was relatively minor, most was touching up the shadows and debris on and around the chip. At the pixel level you can see some bleeding artifacts, but generally it's not bad if I follow the recipe described above. Early on I d...

Rik, Since this is based upon your superb Zerene Stacker, you are asking me :D Seriously though, I surmised that Zerene's algorithms like continuous flow of in focus thin ribbons across the chip surface. With that in mind I try and place the chip image angle such that Zerene has something to "grab" ...

Rik,

Like this?

Here's one with the single tent lighting, note the harsh wirebond reflections. I didn't try and edit these out, but did some editing in the previous image.