Reverse Engineering

Introduction
Product Development Cycle

• Original Product
• Testing & Development-Add

value to Product
• Reverse Engineering
• CADCAM, Rapid Prototyping &

Modern Technologies
• Birth of Product as actually

designed
RE allows the possibilities of closing the loop between what is

“as designed” and what is “actually manufactured”.
What is Reverse Engineering?
• Engineering - the process of
designing, manufacturing, assembling,
and maintaining products and Engineering
systems.
• Forward engineering - the traditional

process of moving from high-level
abstractions and logical designs to the Forward Engineering Reverse Engineering
physical implementation of a system.
• Reverse Engineering
1. The process of duplicating an existing part, subassembly, or product, without drawings,
documentation, or a computer model
2. The process of obtaining a geometric CAD model from 3-D points acquired by
scanning/digitizing existing parts/products.
3. The basic concept of producing a part based on an original or physical model without
the use of an engineering drawing.
4. The process of retrieving new geometry from a manufactured part by digitizing and
modifying an existing CAD model
What is Reverse Engineering?...Contd.
• Reverse engineering is now widely used in numerous applications, such as
manufacturing, industrial design, and jewellery design and reproduction For
example, when a new car is launched on the market, competing manufacturers
may buy one and disassemble it to learn how it was built and how it works.
• Reverse engineering provides a solution

to the problem of replicating the sculpted
model exactly because the physical model
is the source of information for the CAD
model. This is also referred to as the
physical-to-digital process.
• Reverse engineering also compresses product development cycle times &

fetches Rapid Product Development (RPD). For example, injection-molding
companies need to shorten tool and die development time drastically.
• By using reverse engineering, a three-dimensional physical product or clay mock-

up can be quickly captured in the digital form, remodeled, and exported for rapid
prototyping/tooling or rapid manufacturing using multi-axis CNC machining
techniques.
Uses of Reverse Engineering
• The original manufacturer no longer exists, but a customer needs the product, e.g.,
aircraft spares required typically after an aircraft has been in service for several years.
• The original manufacturer of a product no longer produces the product, e.g., the original
product has become obsolete.
• The original product design documentation has been lost or never existed.
• Creating data to refurbish or manufacture a part for which there are no CAD data, or for
which the data have become obsolete or lost.
• Inspection and/or Quality Control–Comparing a fabricated part to its CAD description or

to a standard item.
• Some bad features of a product need to be eliminated e.g., excessive wear might
indicate where a product should be improved.
Uses of Reverse Engineering…Contd.
• Strengthening the good features of a product based on long-term usage.
• Analyzing the good and bad features of competitors’ products.
• Exploring new avenues to improve product performance and features.
• Creating 3-D data from a model or sculpture for animation in games and movies.
• Creating 3-D data from an individual, model or sculpture to create, scale, or reproduce artwork.
• Architectural and construction documentation and measurement.
• Fitting clothing or footwear to individuals and determining the anthropometry of a population.
• Generating data to create dental or surgical prosthetics, tissue engineered body parts, or for
surgical planning.
• Documentation and reproduction of crime scenes.

Reverse Engineering
The Generic Process
The generic process

of reverse engineering is a
three-phase process as
depicted in Figure.
1. Scanning
2. Point Processing
3. Application specific
geometric model
development
Reverse Engineering
The Generic Process…Contd.
Reverse engineering strategy must consider the following
1. Reason for reverse engineering a part

2. Number of parts to be scanned–single or multiple
3. Part size–large or small
4. Part complexity–simple or complex
5. Part material–hard or soft
6. Part finish–shiny or dull
7. Part geometry–organic or prismatic and internal or
external
8. Accuracy required–linear or volumetric
Reverse Engineering
Phase I – Scanning
• The scanning strategy–selecting the correct scanning technique, preparing the part to
be scanned, and performing the actual scanning to capture information that describes
all geometric features of the part such as steps, slots, pockets, and holes.
• Three-dimensional scanners are employed to scan the part geometry, producing

clouds of points, which define the surface geometry.
• Scanning devices are available as dedicated tools or as add-ons to the existing

computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools.
Contact scanners based on Non Contact scanners based on Vertical faces–touch probe versus a laser
CMM technology Lasers, optics & CCD sensors Better accuracy with touch probe, laser
Tolerance : +0.01 to 0.02 mm. Tolerance : ±0.025 to 0.2 mm technology needs further improvement
Reverse Engineering
Phase II – Point Processing
• Importing the point cloud data, reducing the noise in the data collected, and reducing
the number of points
• Users with very good understanding of filter algorithms perform this task using range
of predefined filters
• Sometimes, multiple scans of the part are taken to ensure that all required features
have been scanned
• The output of the point processing phase is a clean, merged, point cloud data set in
the most convenient format.
• Point processing phase also supports most of the proprietary formats mentioned
above in the scanning phase
Reverse Engineering
Phase III - Application Geometric Model Development
• Generating surface data from point cloud data sets is still a very subjective process,
although feature-based algorithms are beginning to emerge that will enable engineers
to interact with the point cloud data to produce complete solid models for current CAD
environments
• This phase depends very much on the real purpose for reverse engineering. For
example, if we scanned a broken injection molding tool to produce a new tool, we
would be interested in the geometric model and also in the ISO G code data that can
be used to produce a replacement tool in the shortest possible time using a multi-axis
CNC machine
• The RE software allows the user to compare the two data sets (as designed to as
manufactured)
• This process is also used for inspecting manufactured parts
• Reverse engineering can also be used to scan existing hip joints and to design new
artificial hips joint around patient- specific pelvic data. This creates the opportunity for
customized artificial joints for each patient
• The output of this phase is geometric model in one of the proprietary formats such as
IGES, VDA, STL, DXF, OBJ, VRML, ISO G Code, etc.
Methodologies & Technologies for
Reverse Engineering
• Computer-Aided Reverse Engineering
• Computer Vision and Reverse Engineering
• Structured-light Range Imaging
• Scanner Pipeline

Reverse Engineering

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Introduction

Product Development Cycle

• Testing & Development-Add

• CADCAM, Rapid Prototyping &

• Birth of Product as actually

RE allows the possibilities of closing the loop between what is

• Forward engineering - the traditional

• Reverse engineering provides a solution

• Reverse engineering also compresses product development cycle times &

• By using reverse engineering, a three-dimensional physical product or clay mock-

• Inspection and/or Quality Control–Comparing a fabricated part to its CAD description or

• Analyzing the good and bad features of competitors’ products.

• Exploring new avenues to improve product performance and features.

• Architectural and construction documentation and measurement.

• Fitting clothing or footwear to individuals and determining the anthropometry of a population.

• Documentation and reproduction of crime scenes.

The generic process

1. Reason for reverse engineering a part

• Three-dimensional scanners are employed to scan the part geometry, producing

• Scanning devices are available as dedicated tools or as add-ons to the existing

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