27 March 2023

IC decapping with paint remover heat gun

I'm not sure where I read about an easy way to decap integrated circuits with heat, but it's certainly not three years ago (when the author published his demonstration video):


Well, while looking for something else in a storage area I found a good candidate to try the same experiment, but in WDIP package: a part marked R3268B with no daatsheet on the Net.

It takes more time to setup the heat gun (paint remover) that doing the job itself. The plastic case gets brittle with heat and it breaks in small pieces. Be careful they don't fall inside the heat gun.

This is the result of my first exposed IC:


I think I was unlucky as something covers the active area. The other side is uniform, like a large ground plane. I could see that pins were quite thick, so perhaps the IC was a motor driver or something that carried large currents. I'll try again with other chips.