15-Dec-21

Reverse Engineering and Rapid Prototyping

(Integration of techniques)

Radha Raman Mishra, Ph. D.

Course Instructor & Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering

Integrating RE and RP
ME F416

• Need: can facilitate the process of new product

development

• Process focus:
RE – extracting the design data
RP – verifying or evaluating the design

• Use of CAD model:

RE – 3D CAD models are created from physical parts
RP – 3D CAD models are utilized to make physical
parts

• Ideal combination: as one helps in the design

phase and the other in the prototyping phase

• The modes of interface can be critical in terms of

efficiency
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Lee, K. H., & Woo, H. (2000). Direct integration of reverse engineering and rapid prototyping. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 38(1), 21-38.

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Interfacing modes between RE and RP

ME F416

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Lee, K. H., & Woo, H. (2000). Direct integration of reverse engineering and rapid prototyping. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 38(1), 21-38.

Problems of existing approaches ME F416

• Process can be carried out

using the existing programs
• Task of creating surfaces is
difficult and time-
consuming • Reduces a step
• Involves tedious manual
• Well accepted operation
• Includes unsorted and
unrelated triangles and
does not retain any surface
• Less time consuming
or feature data
• number of point clouds
• Error caused by
needs to be reduced
approximating the model
• Increases computing load
using planar triangular
patches
• Computing time increases
with smaller triangles
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Lee, K. H., & Woo, H. (2000). Direct integration of reverse engineering and rapid prototyping. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 38(1), 21-38.

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ME F416

Legal Aspects in Reverse Engineering

Legal aspects ME F416

• Contractual restraints
 Restriction to disclose information to third parties
 Confidentiality clauses / proprietary data clauses / right of use clauses

• Trade secrets
 Information concerning the business or industrial relations of a company
 Company keeps it secret and the revelation causes a damage from a
competition point of view in –
o Manufacturing process
o Method of treating or preserving materials
o Pattern for a device

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Legal aspects ME F416

• Patents
 Valid for 20 years
 Both components and processes may be protected
 A new patent cannot hinder anyone to copy an old technology
 It can protect an improvement on the old technology
 The patent holder may grant a license
 A criminal offence to infringe in a patent

• Design rights and Copyright

 Design rights and copyrights may exist for a product
 Such rights should be possible to work around, using a different design
 Otherwise, agreement with the rights holder

ME F416

Barriers to Reverse Engineering

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Barriers to RE ME F416

• Any thing that impedes RE

• Barriers in the reverse engineering

process can be classified as –

1. Technical complexity of the product

or feature

2. Availability of the necessary

resources

3. Skill of the reverse engineering team

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Curtis, S. K. et al. (2011). The fundamentals of barriers to reverse engineering and their implementation into mechanical components. Research in Engineering Design, 22(4), 245-261.

1. Technical Complexity of the Product ME F416

• The technical complexity of a product or feature is an internal barrier to reverse

engineering—the original designer has a direct influence over the magnitude of this
barrier.
Stickiness is a measure of the rate at which usable information
may be extracted from a product while reverse engineering

• When sticky information interacts with other sticky information in a product, the
result is a powerful barrier to reverse engineering.

• The stickiness of pertinent information can be increased by reducing its accessibility

or including more superfluous information in the product to disguise pertinent
features.

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Curtis, S. K. et al. (2011). The fundamentals of barriers to reverse engineering and their implementation into mechanical components. Research in Engineering Design, 22(4), 245-261.

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2. Availability of the necessary resources ME F416

• The availability of the necessary resources is

an external barrier to reverse engineering—
the original designer typically has an
indirect influence on this barrier. (optical comparator, CAD and CAE software, laser cutter, wire EDM)

• When few or no samples of the product are

available, the magnitude of this barrier
increases dramatically

• Proper equipment is often required for efficient product dissection, information

extraction, and data processing. The absence of this equipment could severely reduce
the quality of collected data. The barrier can be made larger by embedding
information that requires specialized and/or unavailable tools to extract.

Curtis, S. K. et al. (2011). The fundamentals of barriers to reverse engineering and their implementation into mechanical components. Research in Engineering Design, 22(4), 245-261. 11

3. Skill of the reverse engineering team ME F416

• A reverse engineering team is more likely to succeed if they have a basic

understanding of the science being analyzed and a familiarity with the process and
tools of reverse engineering.

• Knowing which approach is needed—as-built, design intent, or a combination of

both—will help maximize the return on reverse engineering investment.

Fig. Example of reverse engineering from WWII. a United States Air Force B-29 bomber b Soviet Union Tupolev Tu-4 bomber

Curtis, S. K. et al. (2011). The fundamentals of barriers to reverse engineering and their implementation into mechanical components. Research in Engineering Design, 22(4), 245-261. 12

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Barrier Implementation ME F416

• An innovative product: the driving force for

technological progress

• If successfully reverse engineered: the market

advantage is quickly lost

• Affects incentive for innovation

• The best interest of original designers: to design

products that are difficult to reverse engineer

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Curtis, S. K. et al. (2011). The fundamentals of barriers to reverse engineering and their implementation into mechanical components. Research in Engineering Design, 22(4), 245-261.

Thank you
All the best for Comprehensive Examination

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