Re: [EE] Intentionally delaminating a PCB

My reaction is 'why bother'.
You have the schematics, just generate a new PCB. You need to do this
anyway once you have the delamination pics, and while that would allow you
to do an "exact" copy, the risk of creating shorts or opens if working from
only the layer photos is too high. I also wonder if you may also run the
possibility of copyright issues if you do work to exactly the layers as
produced by the original folk who laid it out. If the copyright exists for
the company you are working for then they should be able to sue for the
gerber files.

By generating new gerbers from the schematics then you can put tweaks in
the inner layers (e.g. text identifying copyright) that can prove it is not
an exact copy of the original PCB and hence avoid any copyright claims.



On Thu, 3 Apr 2025 at 20:49, 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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