X-Ray Tomography

Aircraft fleets in the U.S. and around the world are aging and require a sound supply of replacement electronics to maintain fleet readiness. Oftentimes OEMs for electronics printed circuit boards (PCBs) no longer exist or have halted production on critical parts. Lack of original designs or technical data packages (TDPs) for these components leads to extensive reverse engineering (RE) efforts in order to reproduce these critical components to meet form, fit, and function requirements and thereby reduce the need for costly re-certification efforts. Current PCB RE methods are destructive, prone to human judgment & error, time-consuming, and require highly skilled & specialized labor. A technology solution that enables PCB RE to be accomplished in a more robust, non-destructive, and automated way could save the Air Force millions of dollars each year. This project is combing non-destructive X-Ray tomographic (XRT) imaging with novel data processing, simulation, and machine learning techniques along with legacy PCB re-engineering software typically used in destructive settings, to solve this crucial problem and yield and a more robust and automated XRT-based PCB re-engineering framework.