Question 1:

Reverse engineering has been directed toward extending the useful life of existing products by
providing the knowledge necessary to produce replacement parts. However, there are number of needs
for sound reverse engineering principles and processes in the context of environmentally friendly
design. By referring to a product, elaborate the needs of reverse engineering and the approach
involved.

Answer:

To produce a product with environment friendly design, the designer needs to consider the steps
that come both before and after the design and production process. This were also including the sourcing
and processing of materials and what happens to the product once it has reached the end of its life cycle.
There is principle that had been establish as is used to help designer who want to implement sustainable
design through the process of reverse engineering. The principles were also known as Design for the
Environment (DfE). The 4 main principles were:

1. Design for environmental processing and manufacturing.

2. Design for environmental packaging.
3. Design for disposal and reuse.
4. Design for energy efficient.

For example, the electronic parts for computer products, the design and functionality can be
improved by implementing reverse engineering with considering all the four-principle mentioned
above. The product process involved need to be consider so that main goal can be achieved where are
to minimize the amount of waste, pollution produce, and energy required to produce the product. Next
is the packaging where designer needs to consider biodegradable and recyclable product were being
used for the product packaging. The electronic parts design also need to be consider for their disposal
process and able to be reuse or recycle and avoiding the use of toxic product. Lastly the new design od
the product need to have energy efficient so that the power required for the computer will less and
reduce the electric consumption where it can be used for other purposes.

The main reasons for reverse engineering are:

1. The Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) no longer exist, but customer required that
product.
2. The OEM of a product no longer produce the product.
3. The original product design documentations have been lost or unavailable.
4. The product required for features improvement.
 The approach or the process involved were Digitization phase and Reconstruction phase. In
Digitization phase, the process involved the data acquisition of the physical model by using one of the
numbers types of scanner. The 3D digitization technology can be classified into 2 which are contact
and non-contact. The contact will be using probe that touch the model to get the geometries while non-
contact will be using x-ray for producing the 3D model.

The Reconstruction phase involved the set of data point that is in 3D coordinates system to produce
the point clouds that will be used for the reconstruct of the object in computers. This phase will acquire
range images of the part, pre-processing acquired data, data integration and final 3D CAD model.

Question 2:

Triangular meshes are often used to represent surfaces, at least initially, one reason being that meshes
are relatively easy to generate from point cloud data. However, we often want a smoother surface
representation especially in free-form shapes; and hence the need arises to fit a smooth parametric
surface through the vertices of the mesh. This requires making a suitable parameterization. Explain a
surface fitting using parameterization approach.

Answer:

Parameterization are spline base approach where it uses mathematical spline formula to carry out
the approximation to connect between the cloud point in order to form the topological surface and
points. Some examples of parameterization available are:

1. Uniform Parameterization.
2. Chord-Length Parameterization.
3. Centripetal Parameterization.
4. Foley Parameterization.

For Uniform Parameterization, it assigns the integral parameter values to the edit points and evenly
distribute parameters along the spans between edit points. The first point will be o.0 and equally
continues for the next point such 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 etc. A bonus features of uniform parameterization is the
last edit point is also the number of spans in the curve.

Figure 1 : Uniform Parameterization diagram

 The advantage of uniform parameterization is the parameter is easy to calculate. The drawback of
using this method is the interpolation between edit points is not as good and can contribute to
unpredictable stretching of texture during rendering process.

Question 3:

Discuss the different techniques of digitization by making comparison of their operation,

limitations and advantages.

Answer:

Digitization take place when the geometry is required from the physical object. The phase was
also known as data capturing process as it involved the data acquisition of the physical model using
various types of scanner. The technique can be classified into two category which are contact and non-
contact. Contact technique were using probe that touches the surface of the object during the process of
data acquisition. Such example is A Join Arm and Coordinate-Measuring Machine (CMM). On the
other hand, non-contact divided into two which is reflective and transitive. 3D Laser Scan are using
Reflective while CT scan are using transmissive technique. CMM, 3D Laser Scan and CT Scan were
chosen for the comparison of the operation, limitation and advantages. Figure below show the
characterization of technique for Digital Data Acquisition:

Figure 1: Data Shape Acquisition technique

 The comparison was tabulate into table for better understanding of the differences between
those techniques.
Operation
CMM • Contact with the object
using special probe.
• Output product is in
coordinate system where probe
will give the coordinate of the
touch point surface.
• The digitized data is then
converted into a computer
model, which describes the true
surface of the component
3D Lesser • Non-contact with the
Scanner object.
• The source of capturing
image is using a line of laser
light.
• Output product is in point
cloud wish is thousands of data
captured and need further
processing to get the actual
image of the product.
CT Scan • Not contact with the
object.
• CT scanning permits
internal exploration based on a
similar technology used for
medical MRI
• Use irradiation to
produce 3D internal and external
image.
• Converts the 3D image
data from X-ray computed
tomography directly into meshes
for finite element analysis
• High information density
• Possible to scan any
surface, shape, colour or material
up to a certain density and
thickness penetrable by X-rays.
Limitation
• Very sensitive with
the probe and the software.
• CMM setup
equipment is large and not
portable.
• The machine is
expensive.
• Not very good in
time consuming because
not suitable for taking lot of
data.
• Limitation of data
for internal part.
• Required dark
surrounding to get accurate
data.
• Difficult to get
accurate data for small
features and hole.
• Very reflective
materials generally do not
scan well.
• Limited for external
object.
• Very reflective
materials generally do not
scan well.
• Can harmful the
operator if not doing
correctly.
• The effect of
creating gaps where the
surface is almost parallel to
the slices of the tomogram.
Advantages
• It very suitable to
be use in inspection
application to check the
quality of the product.
• High precision
and accuracy because
probe touch the object.
• Accurate
dimensions.
• Reduces Manual
Intervention.
• High Precision
and very little error.
• Easy Re-
designing if any flaw
detected at the object
during 3D modelling.
• Cost Reduction
by simply and easily re-
designing objects one
can avoid wastage of
time in term taking lot of
data compare to the
CMM.
• 3D scanning can
produce image colour
and very meaningful.
• CT scanning can
produce results for
porosity, dimensional,
failure analysis, volume,
and fibre orientation, all
while leaving the part
undamaged.
• Able to evaluate a
wide variety of dual-
thickness and dual-
density materials.