Reverse engineering in mechanical and other industries is used if the manufacturer of the original product does not provide information about the structure, methods of creating the object, or they were lost. It involves the reconstruction of design documentation, according to which a similar product can be manufactured in the future. It differs from making a drawing based on a sample part in that it works with complex products. Our company provides reverse engineering services when required:
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it is necessary to manufacture a product according to a sample without having documentation;
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existing product documentation is incomplete, lost or contains errors;
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it is necessary to improve an existing product, and documentation for it is not available;
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it is necessary to identify and analyze the positive and negative aspects of competitors’ products;
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The product or its spare parts are no longer in production or are too expensive.
Reverse engineering is important when a customer needs to create new parts that reference or incorporate older designs where the original CAD design is not available.
Reverse engineering: stages of work
To obtain all the necessary information about an object, the reverse engineering of products goes through several stages:
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disassembling the finished product into parts (if necessary)
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determination of materials used in production
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three-dimensional scanning and obtaining a CAD model
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taking dimensions of other elements of the device (if necessary)
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creation of a working model, fitting and testing
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development of drawings
The work begins with the preparation of technical specifications and a work plan. Next, the optimal methods for measuring and constructing models are selected, taking into account the requirements of technical specifications, product design and the proposed technology for producing design documentation.
The next step is to measure, clarify the structure and nominal dimensions of individual parts of the object and their relative position. One physical sample is enough to carry out all measuring operations. To create complex surfaces, we use scanning. The model obtained as a result of scanning requires careful development to recreate a functional prototype.
After fixing the nominal dimensions of the source, calculations and construction of dimensional chains are carried out.
Based on all the data obtained, a parameterized 3D model is created using a computer-aided design system (CAD, CAD system).
As a result of these operations, drawings of the object and other design documentation are generated.
The advantages of reverse engineering are that it allows you to reduce costs due to localization of production, optimization of logistics and other factors; There is a reduction in the cost of manufacturing a product when produced in batches or series. It is also important to repeatedly reproduce documentation obtained during reverse engineering: products can be manufactured an unlimited number of times in any production facility, depending on your tasks.
