Supporting the ever-present problem of
maintaining long-life systems - even in the absence of relevant documentation -
is made easier with this unique hardware/software system.
THE PROBLEM
Maintenance and repair technicians are increasingly confronted
with obsolete PCBs or boards with no circuit schematic diagrams. Ensuring the reliable and safe
operation of transportation or legacy equipment means that electronic
assemblies and boards that malfunction but can’t be replaced need to be
reverse-engineered and properly documented. Sometimes when obsolete boards come in for repair, there is one “golden
board” left in stock that is too precious to install in equipment. How can you avoid
repeatedly discarding PCBs that frequently fail just due to a simple (but
unknown) component? Sometimes
repair shops are faced with fixing boards with no supporting documentation and
the supplier is no longer in business. Old products that are no longer manufactured or supported
by the original supplier is an increasingly pressing problem for users and
maintainers of long life systems such as military systems, aircraft
maintenance, water and electricity utilities, medical equipment, air traffic
control, avionics simulation, traffic control, trains, and signaling. For
systems with an operational life of 25 years, the support strategy for spares and
repairs are critical issues. Long-established
companies are being taken over, restructured, or go out of business, leading to
the growing situation where no support is available. Rapidly changing technology increases the
problems of support.
Consumer products quickly become obsolete (try
buying the same PC motherboard after only six months ….) and are not supported
or manufactured long before the end of their true operating life. But when a product is part of a long life
system, obsolescence is unacceptable unless a replacement is physically and
functionally identical (form/fit/function).
Changing to a new component may mean the enormous expense of
recertifying the whole system for critical equipment such as military equipment
or medical diagnostic machines.
What
is needed is a system that will create essential product documentation to
enable the implementation of a workable maintenance and repair strategy that is
cost effective and independent of the original manufacturer or service
provider. Even better, that will provide
a schematic of the PCB under test, and even create a new PCB layout so new
boards can be made.
THE SOLUTION
While
it is true that manual point-to-point circuit detection, observation, and
manual recording is one solution for trying to re-document the PCB – that is prohibitively
time-consuming. But there is now an
easier way, using a product from Europe called RevEng (REVerse ENGineering - getting REVENGe
on the problem of ‘no documentation’!)
The RevEng System is a remarkable reverse-engineering hardware tool for
creating professional quality circuit schematic diagrams from a sample PCB without
any documentation. The RevEng System consists of a PC-controlled
continuity-detecting hardware system, SYSTEM8
Ultimate control software, and EdWin,
a fully featured CAD package. RevEng
‘learns’ the connectivity of the sample circuit, producing a netlist of the
components and connections for importing into EdWin software, resulting in professional quality circuit diagrams
and even new PCB layouts if required.
Read on here: http://www.saelig.com/supplier/abi/abi-reveng.pdf
Watch video here: https://youtu.be/AhTEneQ7Aa0
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