Reverse Engineering Circuit Board Prototype Production

Prototype production objective

Prototype production involves the manufacture and testing of the prototype to determine if all the layout drawing, schematic diagram, gerber file and list of component extrated Reverse Engineering Circuit Board will be fully compliance with the original version, the most commonly found mistakes on the circuit board layout drawing include missing hole, tracks, pads and nodes, and mistakes on the BOM include the miss/extra parts, incomplete electronic component value and incorrect measurement value, prototype can help to verify if it meets all required specifications.

Sub-contracting

All circuit board assembly prototype manufacturing should be sub-contracted to prove the adequacy of the preliminary technical data package. When assembly and testing procedures are part of the technical data package, the entire assembly should be completed. Testing that is not a normal function of the manufacturing industry may be sub-contracted to qualified third party.

Record maintenance

A record should be maintained of all subcontractor requests for waiver or deviation, and the cognizant engineer should review all such requests, for example, some of the circuit board reverse engineering will record the orientation of transistor assembly especially for the triple insertion with footprint of TO-18, due to the original design mistake, engineer can find the number 2 pin inserted on the number 3 pin’s hole when disassemble the part from it, and this abnormal assembly way should be recorded properly on the document, in the subsequent prototype assembly process sub-contractor should ensure there is no mistake will be made for this part. All discussions with the vendors should include participation by the cognizant contracts or procurement personnel.