General > General Technical Chat
Laser-ing the IC markings off on a budget.
james_s:
I think it's hilarious when companies sand the numbers off of parts. Nothing motivates me to reverse engineer something I would otherwise ignore than a feeble attempt at preventing one from doing so. Engineers love a challenge, and anyone who thinks sanding the numbers off of ICs does anything to prevent reverse engineering the device is completely delusional. If your gadget is worth copying, Chinese companies will be producing knockoffs in no time.
james_s:
--- Quote from: Syntax Error on March 23, 2021, 06:23:28 pm ---Even if you burried the tracks inside a multi layer board, someone somewhere (in China) is going to xray the board and have an Altium clone out by next Tuesday.
--- End quote ---
I have xrayed boards many times as a humble hobbyist. The equipment needed to do so is not expensive or difficult to acquire. Obviously it is necessary from a safety aspect to know what you're doing but it's not rocket science.
james_s:
--- Quote from: Arek_R on March 16, 2021, 02:57:37 pm ---Thanks for advice but I didn't ask for alternative countermeasures or if it can still be reverse engineered or if it makes sense.
I asked if someone used laser and if yes what power of the laser is recommended.
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It's very likely that nobody here knows because none of us have tried. Most of us know how utterly useless it is and have thus not bothered to experiment. Give it a try and see what happens. Post the results so the next person wanting to know can find the answer.
james_s:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on March 23, 2021, 05:40:48 pm ---
How hard is it for someone who really wants it, to identify a chip even if the markings have been blitzed?
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Not very hard at all. I have reverse engineered a couple of different potted assemblies just by gaining access to the bottom of the PCB without ever seeing the top. I identified the ICs by the pinout, it was not difficult to determine that in one device there was a dual op-amp, a 555 and an opto-coupler. I couldn't get the exact part numbers from some of them but I could take an educated guess based on the characteristics of the device they were used in. The first thing I do is identify the power and ground pins, that tends to narrow things down quite a lot. Then look for stuff like clock crystals, filter networks, decoupling capacitors and try to figure out which pins are inputs and which are outputs, a lot of jellybean parts can be identified in minutes. If you are really stuck and don't mind sacrificing a device, there are services and even hobbyists who can de-cap the IC and photograph the die under a microscope which will yield clues as to what it is, occasionally the manufacture or even the part number is etched into the die.
Simon:
Yea work had a subcontractor once who was utterly useless. He supplied a PWM generator to speed control motors, he sanded the number off. I took one look and was like, pin 6 and 2 are joined together, it's a 555, further easy clue was the level shifter and knowing that the 555 is 18V abs max clearly level shifting would be needed on a 555 for 24V so the chip not withstanding 24V was a further clue at a glance before even starting to draw it out.
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