Reverse Engineering Tips

[acgarcia]

Good Afternoon,

I have a small trapezoid looking part that broke of a CNC machine and we would like to make the part instead of buying a new one. Part looks like a 3D trapezoid with rounded edges, 2 thru holes with 2 counter-bores. It doesn't look too complicated. I was given one from another machine to reverse engineer. No print or CAD. I have a couple of touch trigger CMMs and 2 with LSP fixed scanning head each. I don't do a lot of scanning. I've only done are basic circle scans and auto circle adaptive strategies. I've only done the other scan types in level 2 class.

Can anyone offer any tips to get started?

Thanks.

[gibsonridge]

my experience has been to measure planes, lines, circles ,(cylinders & cones using 3 circles) export as iges then let engineering draw up a model.
take new measurements on the created model to improve IJK''s this gets much more accurate data

[stkenitz]

This should work just fine. Depending on the software the designers have too, creating points from your feature hits will help too.

[gibsonridge]

yes , it all depends on how the software sees the info you export, (creo seem to do fairly well)
keep in mind pc-dmis is not a cad software !

[stkenitz]

Scanning won't really help you much, regular probing is fine.

I would just level off the front face, align off the bottom/longer straight of the trapezoid, and the zero off one of the holes. Just make sure your vectoring is correct and you should be golden.

probe the rest of the features, give your designers some numbers/export the points, then they can model it up and you can re-program using the model.

[louisd]

Get to work!!

hahahaaa
on a serious note, i would also draw up a print for them, on paper, with a ruler and a pencil... but that's just me.

[acgarcia]

Thanks for the tips