So they put it on a giant mill ânâ drill and took it down a millimeter at a time?
Scan every layer, make a 3d model.
The misleading text implies that weâll see it go away entirely. We didnât even make it to the valves!
Fun fact, this is how histological scanning of organs is done.
For instance, when someone dies and donates their brain for science, they scan it by deep-freezing it, then grind off a tiny amount, take an ultra high rez photo of the ground surface, grind it down just a tiny bit more, another photo, rinse and repeat. Eventually you get a stack of photos of the brainâs structure in one hand, and a pile of rapidly melting ground up brain-dust in the other.
Reverse-engineering of integrated circuits (or fault analysis) is done also the same way. This time you polish away layer by layer and the layers are thinner, but the principle stays.
Interesting. I didnât know that.
I assumed that since most printed circuits are entirely 2D, you could just look at them with a sufficiently powerful microscope. Like with scanning probe microscopy or something.
Printed circuits, you need xray or peeling apart the layers for multilayer ones, especially the more-than-2-layers ones. (2-layer ones, just strip the parts and scan the boards.)
Integrated circuits are also multilayer. You have two or more layers of metalization and vias in between them.
I assume the black-and-white one is an electron micrograph? Itâs very pretty.
Yes. There are many more on the Net, ask google images for âintegrated circuitâ âcross sectionâ. And/or âelectron microscopeâ.
Iâd seriously like to get that stuff framed for my wall. Along with micrographs of biological stuff.
That. And xrays of all sorts of things.
Itâs cool to see the insides of things. How they are put together, and how they work. I really like watching x-ray videos from way back in the day before they didnât know looking at someoneâs skull for an hour and a half would melt their brain. You get to see lots of different processes that are going on all the time, but you donât notice piloting the meat-puppet around. Our bodies are masters of automation 
The âexploded viewâ is my favorite technical illustration. Hereâs the engine in the Ducati bikes my dad had when I was a kid:
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