PCB Bone Pile Rehabilitation Services

What Are PCB Bone Piles & Why Should I Care About Them?

Bone piles are failed printed circuit board assemblies. Failures frequently occur in post-assembly testing (functional or system test), or worse, during operation in the field. If they are consumer products, they get thrown away. If they are $10K hardware boards, they go to a cage and sit, in the forlorn hope that somebody on the OEM staff will find the time to break away from more pressing needs to troubleshoot them (bonepiles are often composed of down-revision boards). The keeper of that hope is usually the company CFO, who must decide at which point to write these expensive boards off the corporate books as scrap.

Rehabilitating these bone piles at the board level can help reduce or even eliminate them. In the United States, Datest is innovating bone pile recovery, rehabilitation and analysis of failed PCBAs to deliver key results to the industry. “Dead money” is given new life!

How Does PCB Bone Pile Rehabilitation Work?

• Datest receives data, documentation and previously written-off test failures from customers
• Our engineers use test engineering hardware and software resources to map out a plan to bring boards “back to life”
• Skilled technicians troubleshoot, rework and restore assemblies to operational status that previously failed a customer’s functional or system test
• We can rework the boards or show customers where to rework if they prefer to do it in-house
• Datest works closely with customers every step of the way to define what constitutes a “good” board after it is reworked
• The rehabilitation service is frequently offered at a fraction of the original manufactured cost, especially in high volume applications
• Ideal for reverse logistics, warranty repair and returns management programs

The objective is to arrive at an efficient test solution that is cost-effective, delivers significant value (i.e., has a high recovery rate) at minimal risk (often zero risk), thereby selling itself. No fancy sales pitch required: the savings are usually compelling enough.

What’s In It For Me & My Company?

There are many advantages to this technology, but the two most important to manufacturers today are the following:

• Financial benefits. Bone pile rehabilitation creates significant cost savings, often reducing the need for expensive rebuilds. Think of it as “found money.” The folks in the corner offices generally are quite pleased when this money is found.
• Green appeal. Previously failed products get recycled, rehabilitated, and returned to productive use. Fewer resources are expended replacing failed units by building new units from scratch. Mother Earth approves!

SW Systems is a Datest PCB bone pile rehabilitation services sales representative company that covers the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. We also cover the country of Mexico.