To My Readers



If this is the first time you're visiting my blog, thank you. Whether you're interested or just curious to find out about PCB reverse engineering (PCB-RE), I hope you'll find something useful here.

This blog contains many snippets of the content in my books to provide a more detailed overall sampling for my would-be readers to be better informed before making the purchase. Of course, the book contains more photos and nice illustrations, as evidence from its cover page. Hopefully, this online trailer version will whet your appetite enough to want to get a copy for yourself.

Top Review

I started doing component level repair of electronics with (and without) schematics more than 40 years ago, which activity often involves reverse-engineering of printed circuit boards. Although over the years my technical interests have shifted into particle beam instrumentation, electron microscopy, and focused ion beam technology fields, till this day——and more often than not——PCB repairs have returned multiple multi-million-dollar accelerators, FIB, and SEM instruments back to operation, delivering great satisfaction and some profit.

Many of the methods described by Keng Tiong in great details are similar to the approaches I've developed, but some of the techniques are different, and as effective and useful as efficient and practical. Systematic approach and collection of useful information presented in his books are not only invaluable for a novice approaching PCB-level reverse engineering, but also very interesting reading and hands-on reference for professionals.

Focus on reverse engineering instead of original design provides unique perspective into workings of electronics, and in my opinion books by Keng Tiong (I've got all three of them) are must-read for anybody trying to develop good understanding of electronics——together with writings by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, Phil Hobbs, Jim Williams, Bob Pease, Howard Johnson and Martin Graham, Sam Goldwasser, and other world's top electronics experts.

Valery Ray
Particle Beam Systems Technologist

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

The Refurbishment Window


Not every product is a good candidate for refurbishing at every point in its life. The figure above illustrates the concept of the refurbishment window. Refurbishing is most valuable when a product has passed its early reliable life but still has significant structural value remaining.

Safety Warning: Never refurbish safety-critical components where failure could cause injury or death. This includes brake components, airbags, medical implants, pressure vessel seals, and aircraft structural parts. Refurbishing is for convenience and cost savings—not for life safety.

The Repair Trap 

One of the most common errors in asset management is the repair trap: repeatedly repairing a product because each repair has low upfront cost, while ignoring the accumulating total cost and downtime. Refurbishing resets the clock at a fraction of replacement cost as the figure below shows:


Despite the virtues of refurbishing, replacement is sometimes unavoidable. So when do you choose repair or replacement over refurbishing? The decision tree below might help:


The choice between repair, refurbish, and replace depends on four criteria: required reliability, available time, budget, and strategic value. 

 

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