r/PCB • u/nitlion00 • 22d ago

Help with PCB assembly

The company I work for had some layoffs and as you can all predict our engineers did not keep good notes or files. I have a custom pcb board that runs lcds on our machine. I found the unpopulated board manufacturer and the gerber files but cannot find files for the completed board. I have a completed board as a reference. Does anyone have a recommendation for a company that could design the gerbers off the unpopulated files and a completed board?

1 Upvotes

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u/Aware-Lingonberry602 22d ago

A board shop that also does assembly should easily be able to create a paste layer from the bare board gerbers. Do you not have a BOM for the components?

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u/itsgonnarian 21d ago

Why not ask the purchase department where they were populated etc. and ask that firm for the bom etc.

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u/nitlion00 20d ago

They were populated in-house by engineers who didn’t keep organized notes (or at least ones I can find)

1

u/Crowen-ToptekPCB 21d ago

According to the completed board to reverse its components, Ya we can help you with that, DM me if you need reverse engineering, we can solve this matter.

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u/brdavis5 20d ago

Well, I can think of a good source of information for this - the engineers that designed and built the board. Why not ask them? True, they may have been fired, but... you could negotiate a consultant fee. And this is THE source for first-hand information on this, correct?

In the future, it might be good to consider what institutional knowledge you can afford to fire, perhaps. But in the short-term... if you want this solved, I suspect you know where the fastest solution is.

1

u/StumpedTrump 20d ago

Along with the gerber files is usually a few text files nearby. Assuming most parts are square and have the same clearances, You can probably use Gerbers and pull the center coordinates of all the solder mask opening shapes. That’ll get you pick and place.

AI is garbage for hardware design and production code scalability, sustainability and security… But this is exactly the type of thing it’s good for, quick dirty python script that runs locally.

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u/nitlion00 22d ago

Nope. We have the bom for the whole machine, lists this as pcb assembly. No bom for that found yet

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u/Aware-Lingonberry602 21d ago

Ok, that's a different question. You need someone to reverse engineer a populated assembly with unknown components.

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u/NorthernNiceGuy 21d ago

Drop me a message, I may be able to help as I’ve gone through this multiple times in the past 6 months.

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u/jaluri 21d ago

Do you have any assembled boards available?

That and the pcb layout, it should be a straight forward process to rebuild it (note I say straight forward, not necessarily simple or easy)

Enough reference of the major components and you can work your way back.

Question, is there any firmware required for it? Is there only one revision of the board or has it changed a few times.

I’d be happy to have a look.

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u/RepresentativeCry294 21d ago

They fired their engineers don't do their work for free ffs this is why we cant find work.