6 Business Challenges That Require Reverse Engineering Expertise

Reverse engineering, the process of determining how a component was designed and built, is extremely useful for businesses like yours that rely on high-performing, precise equipment and machinery. 

However, not all businesses know how reverse engineering services can help them overcome difficulties that, without a solution, end up posing expensive risks or limit their company’s effectiveness. 

Reverse engineering provides answers for these six common business challenges:

1. A component needs to be manufactured now, but the mold is missing.
2. Essential technical documentation is fragmented, lost, or was never drafted. 
3. A key component has been discontinued, and you don’t have another option to acquire this part.
4. Your team wants to understand how a component was made to analyze the benefits of available solutions. 
5. You have a need for 3-D models of 2-D components to take advantage of modern manufacturing technology.
6. You want to explore your components’ potential for optimization.

Something’s Missing: How Reverse Engineering Can Help 

If your business requires an essential component, but lacks a mold to recreate it, reverse engineering offers a proactive approach. Work with a reverse engineering company that uses advanced scanning and modeling technologies to create a highly accurate version of the original part. This process helps your business eliminate production bottlenecks that arise when trying to develop a less efficient solution. 

Replicating your component through reverse engineering puts production back on schedule, especially if you choose a reverse engineering consulting firm that is dedicated to working as an extension of your team. 

A Problem With Paperwork

Nonexistent or incomplete technical documentation can threaten to slow down production and equipment maintenance. However, reverse engineering can recreate a product and accompanying documentation. A reverse engineering company that offers comprehensive product development services will likely have expertise with creating technical documentation for products in your industry.

Whether your business is using legacy equipment, you depend on in-house engineering that isn’t documented, or you inherited machinery during an acquisition process, reverse engineering services can remake your product to create new documentation.

Back to the Drawing Board

Many businesses rely on components for long-term use, but that doesn’t mean that suppliers will continue to keep that product in stock as their markets evolve. Your company may find that a key component has been discontinued. However, you don’t necessarily need to make costly upgrades to ensure production goes as planned. 

A reverse engineering company can help you recreate the component, so you can offer that information to a new supplier who is able to fulfill your order when necessary.

Reverse Engineering As Market Research 

Reverse engineering can be used to gather information about a specific approach to component design. This data allows you to weigh the pros and cons of the design, develop a better understanding of how it was made, and decide if an alternative solution is more viable. With the support of reverse engineering services, your business can evaluate specific techniques and gain insights that inform your product development processes. 

Making the Jump to 3-D 

Your components may have been built before the now-standard practice of digitization. Reverse engineering with 3-D laser scanning can improve your operations by creating digital versions of your models that can be programmed into your fabrication equipment. Turning your 2-D designs into 3-D models allows you to start production more quickly and efficiently. To ensure the most effective modeling, seek out a team that offers advanced 3-D modeling equipment, such as light detection and ranging (liDAR) or photogrammetry.

Optimizations From the Start 

Reverse engineering isn’t only useful for replication. Your team may already know your product works and how to manufacture it, but ensuring its maximum performance may require you to go back to the concepting phase to see where you can make improvements. 

A company that offers reverse engineering can also help your business restart the product development process to achieve higher tolerances and include optimizations derived from finite element analysis (FEA). 

Find a Reverse Engineering Team With Extensive Experience and Expertise

Finite Engineering provides solutions for your product challenges, including 3-D laser scanning reverse engineering. Our agility, ingenuity, and experience in over 40 industries allows us to apply a significant depth of experience for your engineering bottlenecks and hurdles. 

Our reverse engineering process includes:

• Investigation and discovery. 
• Taking measurements with calipers, LiDAR, and photogrammetry.
• Determining tolerances.
• Considering variations in the product due to wear. 
• Material analysis.
• Understanding functionality. 
• 3-D modeling.
• Technical documentation.

Alongside reverse engineering, Finite Engineering offers comprehensive product development engineering services, including new product development for the mining and energy industry, along with industrial manufacturing, construction equipment, and waste and refuse. Find out how we can apply our experience across many heavy equipment and machinery markets to your specific needs.

Contact Finite Engineering online or call (913) 681-8282 today to work with our experienced reverse engineering company.