Tetrahive Technologies

Tetrahive Wins USAF Phase II SBIR Contract for NDE-based Electronics Reverse Engineering

2020-05-01T00:00:00-05:00

Tetrahive Technologies has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to continue developing capabilities for non-destructive and semi-automated reverse engineering of electronics. The Phase II contract comes on the heels of the successful Phase I effort which demonstrated feasibility of using X-ray computed tomography data (CT scans) to reverse engineer a printed circuit board.

This technology promises to provide organizations with an easier non-destructive pathway to obtain the designs of mission-critical legacy components. Components for which the original designs and/or suppliers are no longer available. These designs are required to produce on-demand or small lot replacements & spares that plug-and-play with existing systems and meet form-fit-function requirements necessary to avoid costly and time-consuming re-certification.

During the two year Phase II contract, Tetrahive will continue to develop and ultimately commercialize/transition this technology by:

Perfoming CT testing (both physical and virtual) in order to ‘engineer the data collection process’ - that is determine the best CT hardware setups, data acqusition techniques, and post-processing methods needed to produce high-quality CT imagery needed for precision re-engineering.
Develop and deliver a custom CT imaging application specifically built to perform functions necessary for processing the 3D CT voxel data, using both automated and manual routines, in preparation for re-engineering.
Continuing our collaboration with ScanCAD International by sub-contracting them to develop a custom import tool which allows for communication between their existing products and our custom CT imaging application - thereby lowering the burden for our DoD end-users and providing a more integrated experience.

“We were thrilled with how Phase I of this project turned out and are excited and honored to continue on to Phase II. Certainly Phase I was not without its challenges, but we learned a lot and were able to find ways to overcome some of the long-standing technical hurdles that have been holding back this type of technology from becoming a reality.”

“This sort of thing would not be possible without the support of the USAF and SBIR program in general. It is a truly spectacular program which affords small businesses like us the opportunity to invest in advancing technology through R&D. It ultimately benefits everyone involved - the small business, the government agency, and everyone else the technology eventually touches.”

“We are very exicted to be a part of it and we look forward to the future of this program.”

-Rob Matthews, CEO & Founder

Tetrahive Presents at 2019 DMC/DMSMS Conference

2019-11-01T00:00:00-05:00

Tetrahive will be presenting a poster at the 2019 DMC/DMSMS Conference held December 2-5 in Phoenix. The poster entitled “X-Ray Tomography Electronics Re-Engineering to Improve Fleet Readiness” showcases some of our work related to NDE and reverse engineering of electronics performed under a recent USAF Phase I SBIR project entitled “X-ray Tomography”.

The goal of the project is to develop processes and techniques to support non-destructive, and semi-automated reverse engineering of electronics. The capability will help our military efficiently create digital “technical data packages” (i.e. design data) of legacy parts so that spares and replacements can be manufactured on-demand.

We are excited about the opportunity to inform other DoD agencies about this ongoing effort and emerging technology.

Tetrahive Wins USAF Phase I SBIR Contract

2019-03-01T00:00:00-06:00

Tetrahive Technologies has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to investigate the feasibility of using X-ray tomography (aka CT scans) to non-destructively and semi-automatically reverse engineer legacy electronics.

“This SBIR program hopes to fill a readiness gap faced by several organizations including our nation’s military. Electronics built for harsh environments often work reliably for decades and as such become ‘cogs in the machine’ that often get taken for granted. But when they do fail, as all parts eventually do, organizations reliant on them are often left with no spares or alternative sources given the age of these components.”

“This emerging technology promises to provide these organizations with the designs (aka technical data packages) from non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of these rare but critical components. These designs are required to produce on-demand or small lot replacements & spares that plug-and-play with existing systems and meet form-fit-function requirements necessary to avoid costly and time-consuming re-certification.”

“We are honored to have been chosen by the USAF for this effort and I am personally very excited about the future of this technology. Especially if it can be paired with advanced manufacturing techniques like 3D printing in the future. An integrated on-demand, non-destructive, re-engineering and manufacturing capability could revolutionalize maintenance and logistics functions for our nation’s military and other organizations that face these issues.”

-Rob Matthews, CEO & Founder

In Phase I, Tetrahive will collaborate with ScanCAD International - a company with a rich tradition in providing destructive re-engineering systems and services. Tetrahive hopes to expand upon this tradition by showing in Phase I that re-engineering of a PCB is feasible using non-destructive CT data and furthermore that portions of workflow - one that is traditionally time-consuming and requires unique human skills - can be done semi-automatically using computational methods.