The "old" dog-bone ball-to-via land scheme originally pushed by BGA producers has seemingly fallen by the wayside.

Unfortunately, the "old" method, which seems to have increased finished board cost by 100x here in the U.S, but not impacted them much at all in China, is being replaced by a seemingly better method involving plugging the vias to which the balls are soldered. Unfortunately, this increases the finished board cost by 1000x, since the yield at each step is about 10%.

Of course, if a guy in the PRC screws up a board run, he becomes inventory for their anatomical replacement parts stock. We'd probably have better yields here if that were our practice.

How are you guys doing that stuff now?

RE