A rapid prototyping methodology for reverse engineering of legacy electronic systems

Commercial and military systems may contain a mix of legacy and state-of-the-art electronic equipment. With time, the older legacy equipment becomes difficult to support, due to increasing costs of spare parts and/or non-existent procurement sources. The technical documentation needed to re-manufacture replacement parts is often insufficient or non-existent, and valuable systems may be retired early as a result. In such cases, rapid prototyping and reverse engineering procedures offer a cost-effective method to replicate the missing part(s). This paper describes a step-by-step semi-automated method for rapidly reproducing electronic systems through reverse engineering of printed circuit boards (PCBs)