Reverse engineering of products is the process of reproducing the data or geometry of the product, which involves manufacturing of the product, designing of the product, constructing and maintenance of the system, structure and the product. In today's global competitive market, product manufacturers are constantly seeking new methods to decrease lead times for the development of new products which meets all the customers' expectations. The process of reverse engineering is used in many fields like electrical engineering, computer science and many others. The main aim of reverse engineering is the analysis of existing product (that may be a mechanical product or a software application) and to produce the geometry.
In the recent years several new technologies and methodologies are evolved to speed up and increase the product developing activities. Which include computer-aided designing (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), rapid prototyping (RP) and rapid tooling (RT). In mechanical field reverse engineering has become a important method for producing 3D model of an existing part by using computer-aided designing (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CAE) and other mechanical methods.
The following chapters provide a brief overview of reverse engineering techniques, which includes methods for obtaining the 3D geometry, material identification for the products and manufacturing techniques like rapid tooling (RT) and rapid prototyping (RP). In particular, I will focus on computer -aided designing, computer -aided engineering, computer-aided manufacturing, rapid tooling and rapid prototyping techniques, which can be used to increase the development of metal castings.
What is reverse engineering?
Engineering is the process involved in designing, manufacturing, assembling and maintaining of products, structures and system. Mainly there are two types of engineering. They are:
- Forward Engineering and
- Reverse Engineering.
Forward engineering is the traditional process of moving from high level abstractions and logical designs to the physical implementation of a system. In some situations, there may be a part or product without any technical data, such as drawings, bill of materials, or without engineering data.
The process of duplicating an existing product or part, subassembly, without drawings, documentation, or a computer model is known as reverse engineering.
Reverse engineering is now very commonly used in various fields such as jewellery design, consumer products, automotive, electronics, entertainment and mechanical designs. For example, when companies launches a new product (car) in the market, the other companies' manufacturer buy one product and disassembles it and learn how it works and how it was built by the company. In some other situations, like automotive designing, the designers give shape to their ideas by using plaster, clay, foam or wood, rubber etc. But a CAD model is required to manufacture a part or product. As the designs or shapes of the products are more critical in shape, designing in CAD software becomes impossible or challenging and there is no guarantee that the CAD model is exact.
Reverse engineering gives a solution to this type of problem because the physical shape itself is the source of information provided for developing the CAD model. Another important reason for reverse engineering is to decrease product development time. In today's competitive global market, manufacturing companies are inventing new techniques to decrease the lead time to market a new product. Rapid product development (RPD) techniques provide designers and manufacturers in meeting the demands of decreased product development.
Why Use Reverse Engineering?
- The original manufacturer of the product no longer exists, but the customer needs the product.
- The original manufacturer of the product no longer produces the product.
- The original product design documentation has been lost or never existed.