Why PCB obsolescence service may be useful to your organization

In oil & gas, transportation, semiconductor, and many other industries, the lifetime of certain equipment extends longer than it was designed for. Although this is great for the overall life of the equipment, problems arise when replacement parts are needed due to discontinuation of these parts as time continues to pass. When costly and impossible to replace equipment finally fails because there are no replacement PCBs, this could create a disastrous situation for your business.  

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This problem is easier to handle when it comes to mechanical parts made of metal. This is because the schematic drawings are more easily accessible so parts can be recreated quite easily.  

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With PCBs however, it is not quite the same. Components which make up the PCB become obsolete as manufacturers stop producing them as new components take their place. A common case is that the PCB files become unavailable as the manufacturer gets bought out or shuts down and the files become long gone. 

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Toyoshima Green Tech offers a number of solutions to fix these issues with our services, depending on the circumstances of each unique case. Some examples include:

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• We collect and repair large amounts of failed PCBs in the supply change so that we can supply them as replacement stock. 

• We are able to recover components that become obsolete from some sacrificial PCBs to attach onto other PCBs. 

• We repair any physical damage (substrate/track/pad) on PCBs through our unique repair process. 

• If original data becomes unavailable, reverse engineering is used on raw PCBs from a sample or schematic.

• We harvest or source alternative components for obsolete components.