Reverse Engineering Parts and Components

Reverse engineering parts or assembly components may be required for production of after market parts for automotive, aerospace, general industry or replacement of out of manufacture parts.

The following are typical considerations and analysis which may be required:

Material analysis, such as hardness and material used. Substitute materials should be carefully analyzed more environmental, fatigue and aesthetics properties.
The original finishing and plating should be determined and duplicated or a suitable equivalent of better should specified.
Surface roughness
Electrical characteristics
Detail dimensional variation analysis

The detail dimensional analysis should be conducted using at minimal calipers, however a more complete analysis my facilitated using a Coordinate-measuring machines (CMM), which can be used to digitize the entire part and the information can be utilized in computer-aided modeling. New and improved techniques in reverse engineering include laser scanning which, as the name implies, uses laser beams to scan across the surface of components of any shape and display the results in real time. A minimum of five parts, not manufactured within the same lot should be sufficient to establish a base line detail engineering drawing.