A manufacturer of power inverters was asked to convert an
existing product from through-hole to surface mount. They were
provided a old, assembled printed circuit board to copy, but there
was no schematic.
I was given the task of extracting a schematic from the assembled
board. This is sometimes called reverse engineering a printed
circuit board. Sometimes the customer is simply trying to copy
someone's board, and other times they want to innovate some aspect
of the product. In this case, the switch to surface mount was
intended to reduce the size and cost of the product.
I completed the job and delivered the schematic in OrCAD format
with a bill of materials. I also identified the required surface
mount components in the updated bill of materials.
