Re: [EE] Intentionally delaminating a PCB

I would just sand right through the layers with an orbital sander or
similar, and use a flatbed scanner to get images of each layer.

David

On Thu, 3 Apr 2025 at 15:49, Neil <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm in discussion with a company who had a product developed by another
> entity, but that other entity left the project (to develop their own
> competitive product) and won't deliver final files.
> The board had gone through several iterations to deal with noise and
> heat, and at this point they have the schematic, BOM and physical
> boards, but no PCB layout files, nor Gerbers, so they can't produce more.
> That's where I come in... they are asking me to reverse-engineer this to
> get back the gerbers so they can continue production. Yes, I'll verify
> it's legit.
>
> The boards are at least 4 layers, so not simple to reverse-engineer.
>
> What techniques are commonly used to do this? I can start by removing
> the soldermask, and then carefully grind away the fiberglass, but
> there's got to be a better way... is there? Any chemicals to eat
> fiberglass and leave copper? Or any way to use heat etc to intentionally
> delaminate the layers so they effectively just peel off? Or any other
> tools to assist with this?
>
> Cheers,
> -Neil
>
>
>
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