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Reverse Engineering

Extraction of construction elements from existing components without drawing

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Do you want a reproduction of components without technical drawings and CAD files? The iCT enables you to visualize your component, including internal structures, graphically in different ways, to measure it and to create CAD data. Eurofins Qualitech‘s powerful X-ray tube and the dimensions of the enormous computer tomograph, for example, allow you to horizontally radiate aluminium in the 300 mm range. Components up to 2000 mm can be X-rayed vertically.

In the field of mechanical engineering, reverse engineering describes the process of extracting the design elements from a mostly industrially manufactured product by analyzing the structures, states and behaviors. On the basis of an order for our customer Roteq Switzerland AG we show a short introduction to a practical procedure.

Figure 1: Aluminum impeller

Component: Aluminum impeller

Task: Generation of CAD capable data in STEP format

Procedure:
The first step is to digitize the component using suitable processes. Here we offer a solution in the form of industrial CT, which allows even internal structures to be digitized. The CT data generated is then available as a so-called voxel model.

Figure 2: Postprocessing steps on the digital model

Subsequently, the surfaces are generated on the scan data in order to represent the geometry as accurately as possible. At this stage, it is already possible to create a target/actual comparison with an existing model, such as a CAD, and to make initial corrections.

The surface model, which is now available as a point cloud, can then be converted into a polygon mesh and used as an STL model for further processing. In certain cases, an STL model is already sufficient, for example, to manufacture components using additive processes.

For many applications, STL data are not suitable as a basis for further work steps. If desired, we can perform a simple reverse engineering to generate CAD-compatible data formats such as STEP and IGES. This can be further processed in the CAD software.