Abstract: An individual chip joining machine is designed primarily to bond a single chip to a multi-chip substrate. The machine includes an X-Y table for moving a substrate to locate a chip site beneath a probe. The probe serves to pick up a chip and either place it on the substrate or remove it therefrom and further serves to heat the chip to join it to the substrate by solder reflow or to melt the solder and allow the chip to be removed. The probe is mounted on a Z direction placement mechanism that also includes means to allow the probe to be backed off a fixed distance from a chip, once the chip has been placed on the substrate preparatory to joining thereto. A second heater heats the substrate to a bias temperature, this heating being controlled through use of a surrogate substrate having a thermocouple attached thereto.