There are many reasons why a PCB must be reverse engineered for a client however it is worth asking the question why do we love to reverse engineering printed circuit boards?
One of the biggest reasons we love to reverse engineer circuit boards is that we can learn a lot from the way a circuit board has been manufactured. We love the challenge of taking a circuit that serves a purpose but is now unsupported working out how it was made + then making a replacement.
Sometimes we need to clone or copy a circuit board in a process that involves duplication. Everything down to the routing of the traces is copied + this means that no mistakes are made, this is especially important for those circuit boards that are EMC Seismic + EMI qualified, routing the traces exactly like the original leaves little room for extra noise or crosstalk on the signalling. It’s in reverse engineering circuit boards like this that we learn how to make replicas of technology that might be dated or have modern equivalents + we have the challenge of finding out where to source parts from, how to manufacture mechanical parts + how to assemble the product.
When it comes to feature upgrades or adding something new we love to reverse engineer a circuit board as we are allowed the creativity to make something great again or to add features that the client longed for but could never have, both situations give us great pleasure using our industry knowledge for your advantage.
Reverse Engineering can often feel like a complex + detailed painting however in reality often circuits are patterns + the more you study them the more you recognise the patterns + the easier it is to reverse engineer the circuit. Many circuits have standard layouts (often found in the application note or datasheet) these circuits help us to draw schematics + layouts of your design. The simplicity of this approach is yet another reason why we love electronic reverse engineering.
To see some of our past projects check out our reverse engineering projects page.