Re: [EE] Intentionally delaminating a PCB

Adding that I am very open to just finding an entity who is already 
better equipped to handle this.

Cheers,
-Neil



On 4/3/2025 3:43 PM, Neil 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
>
>
>