Introduction

Engineering concepts and models are transformed into real parts in conventional
engineering process, whereas the Reverse Engineering approach transforms real parts into
engineering models and concepts. While preparing a model from the available single worst
conditioned original part, the manufacturer has to thoroughly examine and precisely measure
all the prominent geometric feature of that component i.e. all the free-formed surfaces, complex
contours and 3D surfaces using the techniques like scanning, acoustics and optical methods
and also the dimensions and features which can be measured manually are to be measured with
the help of measuring devices and the available digitization techniques with utmost care as the
original part is crucial for validation.

In the field of computer-aided design (CAD), Reverse Engineering has become an

effective method to create a three-dimensional (3D) virtual model of a physical object by
scanning for manufacturing. The measurements are in the form of 3D point clouds that
correspond to points on the surface of the object being re-engineered. Use of CAD models to
represent the scanned object is very important in various industries because they help to
improve the quality, efficiency of design and in addition, they speed up the manufacturing and
analysis process.

Reverse Engineering and 3D scanners have their effective roles in different fields such
as medical imaging, animation/entertainment industry, software & manufacturing engineering,
microchips, chemicals, electronics, pharmaceutical products, cultural heritage, web commerce
and engineering in different ways.

In mechanical engineering domain, through the concept of Reverse Engineering an

existing part is recreated by measuring its’ surface or geometrical features data using contact
or non-contact measuring devices or Coordinate Measuring Machines which provide outputs
in the form of an unstructured point cloud, i.e. a large set of vertices in a 3D coordinate system.
The point cloud is then usually converted to a CAD model through a process commonly
referred to as 3D reconstruction so that it can be used for computer-aided manufacturing.
Creation of product takes advantage of the extensive use of CAD/CAM/CAE systems while
implementing the concept of reverse engineering and apparently provides significant
improvement in quality, materials properties, efficiency of re-design, manufacture and
analysis.
Reverse Engineering
In today’s highly competitive marketplace along with technical sophistication, it
becomes mandatory to produce and deliver more competitive products as per the expectations
of customer with better quality at lower price on time. Idea development and mock-up making
are the predominant factors for a designer to communicate their ideas during the process of
product development and one of the major challenging tasks faced by manufacturing industries
is substantial reduction of product development time. Traditionally Polyurethane (PU) foam
or Extruded Polystyrene (EK) foam, clay, gypsum, lumber, wax and so forth have been used
by the designers to make a mock-up once ideas were developed for either a new product or
modification in the existing product. Making complex featured patterns and moulds using
traditional methods are inefficient and error-prone and because of product complexity with
free-form surfaces, it is quite often that many modifications are needed. By considering these
factors, the continuous research led to the abundant progress in computer hardware and
software. By following that the designers started replacing the manual process gradually by
automatic computer and related equipment’s to make the product models. But after the
utilisation of CAD/CAM system into the product development process, the time components
related to the various important sectors in the industries such as product design, development
and manufacture were reduced significantly. Therefore, reverse engineering and rapid
prototyping of objects with complex surfaces have received significant attention from both
research and industrial communities.

Reverse Engineering (RE) is one of the methodologies for obtaining information of the
components in order to improve them and it is the process of engineering backward to build a
CAD model geometrically identical to an existing product. Subsequently, CAD models are
used for manufacturing or other applications. An example application is where CAD models
are unavailable, unusable, or insufficient for existing parts that must be duplicated or modified.
Engineering concepts and models are transformed into real parts in conventional engineering
process, whereas the Reverse Engineering approach transforms real parts into engineering
models and concepts. While preparing a model from the available single worst conditioned
original part, the manufacturer has to thoroughly examine and precisely measure all the
prominent geometric feature of that component i.e. all the free-formed surfaces, complex
contours and 3D surfaces using the techniques like scanning, acoustics and optical methods
and also the dimensions and features which can be measured manually are to be measured with
the help of measuring devices and the available digitization techniques with utmost care as the
original part is crucial for validation.

In the field of computer-aided design (CAD), Reverse Engineering has become an

effective method to create a three-dimensional (3D) virtual model of a physical object by
scanning for manufacturing. The measurements are in the form of 3D point clouds that
correspond to points on the surface of the object being re-engineered. Use of CAD models to
represent the scanned object is very important in various industries because they help to
improve the quality, efficiency of design and in addition, they speed up the manufacturing and
analysis process.

The typical procedure of reverse engineering is shown in figure 3.1.

 Figure 3.1 Basic Flow of Reverse Engineering

Reverse Engineering and 3D scanners have their effective roles in different fields such
as medical imaging, animation/entertainment industry, software & manufacturing engineering,
microchips, chemicals, electronics, pharmaceutical products, cultural heritage, web commerce
and engineering in different ways. In mechanical engineering domain, through the concept of
Reverse Engineering an existing part is recreated by measuring its’ surface or geometrical
features data using contact or non-contact measuring devices or Coordinate Measuring
Machines which provide outputs in the form of an unstructured point cloud, i.e. a large set of
vertices in a 3D coordinate system. The point cloud is then usually converted to a CAD model
through a process commonly referred to as 3D reconstruction so that it can be used for
computer-aided manufacturing. Creation of product takes advantage of the extensive use of
CAD/CAM/CAE systems while implementing the concept of reverse engineering and
apparently provides significant improvement in quality, materials properties, efficiency of re-
design, manufacture and analysis.

3.3 Scanning
In the process of reconstructing mathematical geometric models for FEM analysis,
rapid prototyping and the re-engineering procedures the role of Reverse Engineering of
elements is crucial. The foremost important step in reverse engineering is acquiring geometric
information of the product as it affects greatly the surface quality of the product model. Hence
a key point to be resolved here is to identify the optimistic procedure to measure the object and
proper regulation to collect good data points. While incorporating Reverse Engineering
concept, nowadays in most of the research work it is focused on the accuracy of the considered
scanning process and the complex external surfaces reconstruction procedure. The present
work aims to develop a high accuracy and reliable method to perform RE operations on
complex freeform surfaces.

In the application of industrial design, the material used usually affects the accuracy of
the constructed model. Thus, it is very important to cut off the improper measured data and
reduce the number of data points before a 3D product model is constructed, if the point clouds
are obtained with laser scanner. Parametric model and shape averaging are two techniques
usually used in constructing 3D configuration with computer graphics. If 2D configurations are
considered as the cross sections of an object, then a 3D product model could be constructed
with them. On the other hand, if the shapes of these 2D cross sections are changed, a new 3D
product model can be created.

3.3.1 Basics of laser scanning system

A laser stripe is projected onto a surface and the reflected beam is detected by CCD
cameras. Through image processing and triangulation method, three-dimensional coordinates
are acquired. The laser probe is mounted on a three-axis transport mechanism and moves along
the scan path that consists of a series of predetermined line segments. It also rotates in two
directions. When the laser scanner captures an image, the system automatically finds an optical
focus and keeps the standoff distance. The length of laser stripe and the stand-off distance
cannot be changed by an operator. Since a laser scanner consists of optical sensors and
mechanical moving parts, various constraints must be satisfied when measuring a certain point
on a part.

Figure 3.2 Laser Scanning Mechanism

The generated optimal scan plan must satisfy the following major constraints [6]:
1. View angle: the angle between the incident laser beam and the surface normal of a point
being measured should be less than the maximum view angle g
2. FOV: the measured point should be located within the length of a laser stripe
3. DOF: the measured point should be within a specified range of distance from the laser source
4. Occlusion: the incident beam as well as the reflected beam must not interfere with the part
itself.
5. The laser probe should travel along a path that is collision-free.
6. If the part is shiny or transparent, preprocessing is required such as spraying.
 Figure 3.3 Constraints for Laser Scanning
For a 3D line laser scanner Xi and Shu developed a CAD-based path planning system
with the objective of maximizing the coverage of the part by finding the best setup for the field
of view of the laser scanner and part orientation.

Using off- line programming of the CMM, a new method has been developed by
Bernard and Veron to automatically scan a part. To facilitate the data acquisition process and
also to find the illuminated region using laser beam, Paint called a software module was used.
However in order to enhance the scanning efficiency, the system is to be improved to read the
complex part.

Zussman et al. developed an algorithm that will be used to find the location of a laser
sensor with the limitation of scanning 2D profile of a surface and could not be used to scan an
entire surface of an object. Using a surface decomposition method Elber and Zussman
developed an algorithm to calculate the number of scans and corresponding optimal scanning
directions for a part with a freeform surface. In order to determine the scannability of a point
on a surface they considered the angle between the surface normal and the incident beam
without the consideration of other constraints.
 CMMs have been widely used in industrial applications and some parts of the
measuring processes as same as laser scanners. To inspect the complex parts Yau and Menq
and Lim and Menq developed an automated CMM path planning which provides collision-free
inspection paths for dies and molds. After the initial scan path generation, using the ‘Verify’
program, the inspection plans were simulated in a CATIA robotics module. CAD/CAM
environment is used for the inspection of a manufactured part and CMM is employed to execute
it in the shop floor automatically.

For computing accessibility information Spitz et al. described two sets of algorithms
and introduced the notions of accessibility and approachability. One algorithm performed exact
computation on polyhedral object and was relatively slow, whereas the other used discrete
approximation for increasing the speed. The discretized algorithm has been tested on real-world
parts.

Figure 3. 4 Laser Scanning System

3.3.2 Scanning Measurement Principles

Vision systems which are commercially available to measure the object coordinates are
classified into passive system and active system. In Passive vision system to achieve discrete
object coordinates it uses intensity coded images for the information which achieve high
accuracy on the objects like artificial and natural object texture and edges. Active vision system
utilizes structured light or laser beam projection techniques and the additional information by
spatial and temporal active encoding to get the measurements of objects irrespective of its
visual features. Both active and passive vision systems consists of similar optical components
and similar error source but the accuracy of vision systems is independent of the source
influence.

Optical lens system is used in passive vision system for image acquisition which
delineate the object surface and geometry are regarded as functions of image coordinate
measurements in 2D image field and for the measurement of 3D object coordinates sensor
calibration is used to feed the necessary information.
The sensor has been used in an active vision system for the definition of measurement
point and its measurement range so the applied method for object point coding together with
the sensor calibration and object features affects the accuracy and repeatability of location of
3D object coordinates with the active vision system.

For actual object point coordinates determination, geometric triangulation principle

which gives high accuracy in measurement has been used in both the systems. Single spot laser
beam or unique surface phase map produced via phase shifting has been followed to obtain the
data for triangulation procedure.

Scanning Methodologies
The basic parameters of the surroundings such as the temperature, humidity and lighting
should be maintained constant because if the first two parameters temperature, humidity can
change in the dimensions of the scanned object as well as change the parameters of the scanning
system. Calibration of the scanning device and the scanning process has been affected
dominantly by the room lighting and a change of lighting during scanning can worsen the
scanning conditions and leads to errors during scanning and the prolonged time-demand of the
scanning. Creaform EXAscan device cannot change the parameters of the laser beam during
scanning; whereas the Steinbichler Comet allows a change of parameters during scanning in
view of its different technology.
For a real world 3D object, to describe the entire object surface with complete geometric
information instead of single range image. Multiple views of the object must be digitized and
all range images must be aligned in one global coordinate system to extract a 3D model from
multi-view range images. The sophasticated and the costliest precision motion device called
coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is generaly used to capture the multi view range images
using a digitizer. But it is more inconvenient for many real world applications.

Designs of components being transposed and reflected into products in the traditional
manufacturing where as in reverse engineering with respect to the existing artifacts the products
are being measured analysed, modified and get manufactured. Hence this complementary
process generously employed in the tool, die, and mould making industries to develop and
manufacture a wide range of products which include sophisticated prototypes, such as wings
for aircraft, blades in gas turbines and compressors, aerodynamic components in aerospace
vehicles and cars, and prostheses in medical applications. Using the concept of reverse
engineering even obsolete products and artifacts with free form surfaces can be reproduced
whose design details are non-existent. A data acquiring machine, a computer system with
supporting software and a CNC machine tool are the basic components and the acquisition,
analysis and transfer of technical data are the key elements of the traditional reverse
engineering. The scanning devices that are used for data acquisition in reverse engineering
include electrical–mechanical systems, such as force-sensitive touch probes, and laser-based
optical scanning machines.

Co-ordinate Measuring Machines (CMM) is used for data acquisition of products,

especially in the aeronautical and automotive industries where complex surfaces are frequently
encountered. But the high cost of the co-ordinate measuring equipment, supporting software,
and the time to recover surface details by the measurement process are the drawbacks of this
technology. In addition, the use of CMM, touch-trigger probe technology may damage the
product surface; mislead the readings owing to the deflection of the probe or part and the
erroneous calculation of probe tip compensation. These disadvantages can be overcome with a
non-contact vision system and in a manufacturing environment; the noncontact characteristic
of the vision measurement enables the measurement to be taken without suffering from the
drawbacks of contact measurement. There is no surface damage to the part, no deflection of
the probe or part since there is no contact between the probe and part. Also, a calculation of the
probe tip compensation is unnecessary because there is no probe tip in the vision system. Laser
technology has been used as a non-contact measurement method, but its high energy limits its
application in medical field.
 RE refers to the process of creating engineering design data from existing parts.
It recreates or clones an existing part by acquiring the surface data of an existing part using a
scanning or measurement device. It is useful in recreating the solid model of an existing part
using any modeling software such as Auto CAD, CATIA, Pro/E etc when the engineering
design is lost or when the model has gone through many design changes.
It enables us to capture the surfaces of design models that are otherwise impossible to
determine. In recent years, the laser scanning technology has improved significantly, and it has
become a powerful tool in capturing the geometry of complicated design models.
The CAD model developed by an RE process can be converted to the physical prototype
using an RP technique. Generally, in RP, physical parts are fabricated layer by layer. It uses
additive manufacturing processes, which do not require any tools or set-ups compared to the
subtractive techniques used in the traditional machining operation. Direct solid model can be
exported or imported in some software with CAD/CAE/CAM systems using standard formats
such as IGES, STL, VDA and STEP. It allows us to fabricate
features that are difficult to fabricate by machining operation. Different
fabrication methods exist for RP, but nearly all use the same geometry input format, called
STL (Stereo Lithography), which consists of a list of triangular facet data. The STL format
has advantages due to its simple structure and ease of use, but it also has serious drawbacks.