Reverse Engineering

In the world of precision engineering, reverse engineering is the process of taking apart a product in order to find out how it is designed and made. Once this has been deduced, it will then be possible to mass produce the item to meet the exact specifications.

While regular engineering involves the creation of parts and products using precise diagrams and measurements, reverse engineering is the opposite. It is predominantly used where technical drawings are not available and there is no way of knowing how the item was made.

Reverse Engineering begins by obtaining dimensional information of the item. The product is also taken apart to assess its internal mechanisms. Once all the information has been obtained, the data is used to make CAD drawings to help the manufacturing process.

The process of reverse engineering enables manufacturers to duplicate an existing part by capturing its material properties, physical dimensions and features. One of the most common uses of the service is in the case of legacy components that were manufactured a long time ago and for which there are no existing digital instructions available. Manufacturers will use reverse engineering techniques to obtain the required information to not only recreate the component, but also establish digital specifications so the item can easily be created again in the future.

Reverse engineering services can also be called upon if the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has gone out of business or has lost their design measurements. Manufacturers will use reverse engineering to provide the essential product information to continue building the item. In addition, a company can utilise the process of reverse engineering to analyse their competitors’ products.

Another use of reverse engineering services is dealing with ancient and bespoke objects. If an item is organic in shape (meaning it does not have a standard geometry such as a cylinder or cuboid), it can be extremely difficult to use CAD software to get an accurate representation of the component’s dimensions. Reverse engineering solves this problem by using the existing part as the source and creating digital instructions from there.

Reverse engineering services provide engineers and clients with a number of important benefits. One of the most important of these is in the replacement of legacy components. Many businesses will still typically use old machinery as part of their production processes that are no longer supported by their OEM. If a component in one of these machines should fail, the company is in a race against time to get everything back up and running as soon as possible.

The use of reverse engineering also enables manufacturers to improve their process and machines, and implement new processes. It also helps them keep a record of how the efficiency, power and lifespan of equipment can be improved.

Forward-thinking companies can employ reverse engineering to create spares of business-critical components before they actually fail. This enables them to limit the effect a breakdown can have. To make things even more efficient, a firm can use any planned downtime to obtain the spare parts using reverse engineering and then use another period of planned downtime to conduct any repairs.

A final advantage of using reverse engineering services is that they can greatly reduce the lead time and cost of obtaining OEM parts.