Reverse Engineering of Mechanical Parts

Definition:

Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device or
object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking
something (e.g. a mechanical device, an electronic component, a software program) apart and
analyzing its workings in detail, usually to try to make a new device or program that does the same
thing without copying anything from the original.

In the United States and many other countries, even if an artifact or process is protected by trade
secrets, reverse-engineering the artifact or process is often lawful as long as it is obtained
legitimately. Patents, on the other hand, need a public disclosure of an invention, and therefore
patented items do not necessarily have to be reverse engineered to be studied. One common
motivation of reverse engineers is to determine whether a competitor's product contains patent
infringements or copyright infringements.

Historical Examples of Reverse Engineering Concepts:

Reverse engineering is often used by military in order to copy other nations' technology, devices or
information, or parts of which, have been obtained by regular troops in the fields or by intelligence
operations. It was often used during the Second World War and the Cold War. Well-known
examples from WWII include:

• Jerry can: British and American forces noticed that the Germans had gasoline cans with an
excellent design. They reverse engineered copies of those cans. The cans were popularly
known as Jerry cans.
• Tupolev Tu-4: Three American B-29 bombers on missions over Japan were forced to land
in the USSR. The Soviets, who did not have a similar strategic bomber, decided to copy the
B-29. Within a few years they had developed the Tu-4, a near perfect copy.
• V2 Rocket: Technical documents for the V2 and related technologies were captured by the
Western Allies at the end of the war. Soviet and captured German engineers had to
reproduce technical documents and plans, working from captured hardware, in order to
make their clone of the rocket, the R-1, which began the postwar Soviet rocket program that
led to the R-7 and the beginning of the space race.

Objectives:
The need for spare parts is increasing as technology continues to evolve.
Companies that manufacture or produce constantly changing parts use reverse
engineering as a primary inspection tool for recreation of spare parts. Reverse
engineering refers to the process of obtaining a CAD model from an existing
physical part.

Advances in laser scanning technologies have facilitated this process by

sampling part surface data with speed and accuracy. With the help of this
technology, it is possible to acquire the geometry of a part having complex and
freeform surfaces. Laser scanning presents options the previously used methods
do not allow. Damaging part surfaces because of contact is not a problem with
laser scanning.

Technical Approach:
Our system uses the IVP 2000 Range Scanner to acquire scanned data and generate
a 3D freeform model using RapidForm. The IVP Range Scanner is equipped with a
camera system and laser scanner that acquires the data after scanning. One of
the many options that RapidForm offers is the use of its various workbenches.
After importing scan data into RapidForm, users can segment feature regions on
the model and fit analytic or freeform surfaces to each segment of scanned data
depending on the geometries of different feature regions. By simply clicking on
a feature region of the model, (i.e. a plane, cylinder, cone, sphere or
freeform surface), and RapidForm fits the appropriate surface to the model.
After surface fitting of the model, a feature aware solid model in RapidForm is
automatically created by trimming and merging the surface patches. The solid
models created in RapidForm can be exported into virtually any solid modeling
tool.

Results:

Thus the water pump design can be Reverse Engineered and converted into solid model.
 Figure 1: Reverse Engineering pipeline of the reconstruction of the water pump used for data
testing

Figure 2: Animated 3D reconstruction of the top surface of the water pump

Include materials (Both sketches & Text matter) about:

• IVP 2000 range Scanner.

• Segmentation & surface fitting.