With this you can do 0.5mm pitch BGA although that is pushing it.
If you have actually figured out how to consistently make boards with BGA-256/512 0.5mm pitch parts with just a toaster, I'd love to learn more about your technique. Even with professional inspection equipment and a pick and place, it's rarely worth the effort unless I have an imminent deadline.
For a beginner, I doubt the cost of trial and error would be cheaper than just having someone else do it. He could go with a larger pitch [edit: and smaller pin count] but I have never successfully introduced someone to FPGAs without a relatively huge chip capable of running a soft core closer to what they're used to with in general purpose computing.
If you have actually figured out how to consistently make boards with BGA-256/512 0.5mm pitch parts with just a toaster, I'd love to learn more about your technique. Even with professional inspection equipment and a pick and place, it's rarely worth the effort unless I have an imminent deadline.
For a beginner, I doubt the cost of trial and error would be cheaper than just having someone else do it. He could go with a larger pitch [edit: and smaller pin count] but I have never successfully introduced someone to FPGAs without a relatively huge chip capable of running a soft core closer to what they're used to with in general purpose computing.