I have reverse engineered boards too, and the 'layer peal away' method works pretty well if you are careful. A vertical end mill or possibly abrasive removal might work. John's method sounds like a very good solution. However you will destroy the original. Sometimes you only have one copy of the board and want to preserve it... then what? It was suggested to me that you could send the board to a local board shop and have them generate a net list by probing all the points on the board. Having a netlist would help a lot... maybe even if you wanted to recreate a schematic to go with the board design... X-ray might be useful additionally in seeing the internal layer structures but seeing the details can be difficult to do thru a lot of layers... Just a thought... I wonder if heating it to a level that delamination occurs would help in stripping off the layers or not... probably would make a mess of it though... hard to say, never tried it. Before going through that though, I would do an exhaustive search for the original artwork, in house, and at previous vendors that made the board for us to see if I could obtain images of the layers that way. Good luck. Bill -----Original Message----- From: John Burke [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 10:33 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] reverse engineering, legit style Jeff. I had to do this once and for the record here is how I did (and still would) do it. Take a camera and fix it in a stand looking vertically down at the base. On the base you have tooling pins for your board. Place board on the tooling pins and take a picture. Remove board and using a standard sectioning equipment remove the solder resist down to the copper layer 1 - take another photo. Grind down to copper layer 2 - take another photo. You will end up with all 12 layers, effectively "pin registered" that you can scale from the original board size and re-create using a CAD system. Have fun John Burke (408) 515 4992 -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeff Seeger Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 9:02 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] reverse engineering, legit style , Hallooo, Technet - I've been handed an unusual request, to try and duplicate a PWB from >10 years ago for a resupply type of contract. The OE has officially declined participation and releases to that effect have been obtained. Parts have largely been identified and are mostly sourced. My question is, what manner of tool stands a chance of imaging internal layers? XRay Laminography? A chance to stay in photo methods would sure help keep costs down. Board is reasonably small, 2x5 or so, and thankfully not jammed or superbly advanced for its era. Layer count is at least 6, which would seem appropriate for what I see. However there is one scary marking of 12L off to one corner. If by chance a vendor with expertise happens to be in earshot, I'd love a call. Thanks in advance - one more thing to try and sort out before vacation next week (ain't that the way)! -- Jeff Seeger Applied CAD Knowledge Inc Chief Technical Officer Tyngsboro, MA 01879 jseeger "at" appliedcad "dot" com 978 649 9800 --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------