3D Model Reverse Engineering for Reshoring

3D Model Reverse Engineering for Reshoring

Laser scanning based reverse engineering is a powerful tool for reshoring.

It's sad, but true that many products being manufactured overseas were at least partially engineered overseas. It's very common for molds and tooling for US products to be designed by and be owned by overseas manufacturers.

The overseas manufacturers often develop and build tooling at "no cost" which makes it easier to get started, but nearly impossible to leave. If a customer wants to move a manufacturing operation, he or she is often faced with having to redesign and rebuild all of the tooling. Laser scanning can help.

Often the tooling development process results in small tweaks to the part design. And often these tweaks go unnoticed and don't get incorporated into the official design. Trying to build new tooling doesn't just involve redesigning the tooling, but also redesigning the part. And that's where laser scanning based reverse engineering comes in.

3D laser scanning (or X-ray CT scanning) can collect enough measurement data to completely describe a part. The scan data can then be processed with advanced reverse engineering software, like Rapidform, to create high quality, dimensionally accurate CAD models. These models can be used for designing tooling, design documentation and quality control.

Think about laser scanning the next time you're involved in a reshoring effort.

3D Model Texas Medical Device Alliance and STL

3D Model Texas Medical Device Alliance and STL

I attended my second TMDA meeting on February 9, 2012. The presentation by David K. Leigh was especially interesting.

David spoke on the evolution of design and manufacturing and the role of additive manufacturing in the evolution. He also spoke of the need of and ongoing efforts to develop formal specifications for additive manufacturing processes.

Later, via email, David pointed me towards information on the ongoing development of a replacement for STL. Originally dubbed STL 2.0, it's now named AMF. The format promises to significantly increase resolution while simultaneously reducing file size. Additionally, there are discussions on adding the ability to include voxel data (3D bit-maps) commonly used by medical imaging equipment and industrial CT scanners.

David K. Leigh is the president of Harvest Technologies in Belton, Texas.