What do you do when a critical part is no longer available? While visiting a customer for another job, they asked an unusual question — "can you get resistors?" — the kind of request that's clearly the tail end of a much longer story. It turned out to be the start of a fascinating reverse-engineering project.
The customer had several pieces of equipment used to monitor the breathing of sedated animals. Each relied on a delicate sensor at the end of a wire, which was prone to damage — and the replacement part had since been discontinued. Without it, they faced scrapping four pieces of working equipment, at a cost of thousands of pounds to replace.
A quick fix was possible — soldering a new thermistor directly onto the end of the wire — but that would likely only survive one use, and any failure risked a broken component being inhaled by the animal. A more robust, long-term solution was needed.
We set about reverse engineering the part from scratch:
The customer was delighted, with their equipment back in service and thousands of pounds saved. As a bonus, we now have a part that can be offered to anyone else facing the same issue with the same equipment.
Reverse engineering and building bespoke parts is time-consuming and not cheap, but it can be done. If you have a problem you simply can't find a solution for, get in touch — our ability to work across engineering, electronics and technology is second to none, and we love making the impossible, possible.
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