Reasons for reverse engineering:
Interoperability.
Lost documentation: Reverse engineering often is done because the documentation of a particular device has been lost (or was never written), and the person who built it is no longer available. Integrated circuits often seem to have been designed on obsolete, proprietary systems,
which means that the only way to incorporate the functionality into new technology is to reverse-engineer the existing chip and then re-design it.
Product analysis. To examine how a product works, what components it consists of, estimate costs, and identify potential patent infringement.
Digital update/correction. To update the digital version (e.g. CAD model) of an object to match an “as-built” condition.
Security auditing.
Military or commercial espionage. Learning about an enemy’s or competitor’s latest research by stealing or capturing a prototype and dismantling it.
Removal of copy protection, circumvention of access restrictions.
Creation of unlicensed/unapproved duplicates.
Academic/learning purposes.
Curiosity
Competitive technical intelligence (understand what your competitor is actually doing versus what they say they are doing)
Learning: learn from others’ mistakes. Do not make the same mistakes that others have already made and subsequently corrected
Reverse engineering or backward engineering is the process of deconstructing a product to see how it works. A company can reverse engineer a product for various reasons, including fixing, testing or recreating it. If you have an interest in working in the engineering or manufacturing industry, knowing everything about reverse engineering can help you build a rewarding career. explore its benefits, outline the steps to reverse engineer a product and provide a few examples of reverse engineering.
What is reverse engineering?
The answer to the question, ‘What is reverse engineering?’ is that it is a process in which a designer or developer dismantles a product to learn about its design. Traditionally, companies used to reverse engineer physical objects, but today companies can use this process on codes of various applications. Using backward engineering, companies can deconstruct software, aircraft, machines and architectural structures to extract their design information. The reverse engineering process allows you to identify how a company designed a particular part so that you can recreate it.
Usually, companies widely use the backward engineering process to create a replacement part of an obsolete product. This means that engineers mimic a design without the original blueprint. The knowledge gained during the backward engineering process can help a company teach their employees how things work and gain a competitive advantage over others.
Here are a few benefits of reverse engineering:
Exploring existing products: Backward engineering allows you to explore products that already exist. Evaluating the existing products in the market can result in innovation and discovery.
Recreating a product: One of the primary goals of reverse engineering is recreating a product without using a blueprint. Using this process, companies can make an old and outdated product, a less expensive version of a product, an obsolete machine part and a competitor’s product.
Repairing existing products: Companies can repair an existing product using this engineering technique. This can also help them identify common errors in a product’s design and learn how to fix those for future projects.
Discovering product vulnerabilities: Companies can reverse engineer a new product or its prototype as a test. Through this, they can learn about the product in new ways and search for errors, inconsistencies or overall vulnerabilities.
Inspiring innovation: Reverse engineering fosters innovation. It helps engineers connect projects with previous knowledge and develop innovative ideas.
Conducting failure analysis:You can use reverse engineering to analyse why a product did not work as intended.Examining a faulty product through backward engineering can help you identify its damaged parts and repair them.
Performing competitor analysis:An organisation can reverse engineer a competitor’s product to understand how it differs from other products in the market.
Reducing product development costs: By understanding how a competitor manufactures a product, a company can develop cheaper alternative solutions.
When is reverse engineering used?
For manufacturers, reverse engineering is a critical process. When a company has limited knowledge of an engineering part or when there is no two-dimensional (2D) or 3D model available, reverse engineering can provide design information. Companies can use this technique when replacement parts from an original equipment manufacturer are obsolete or unavailable. Reverse engineering also helps optimise product assemblies and provides new and added features. Manufacturers often use reverse engineering principles to improve a product. Sometimes, companies use this engineering technique for building digital archives to create a virtual environment for future references.
Here are five steps to reverse engineer a product:
1. Gather information
The first step in backward engineering is collecting information about the product. This might mean measuring product dimensions, identifying source design and understanding the coding of the device. Gathering information is essential for engineers, as it helps them know the product well before deconstructing it.
2. Develop a model
After gathering information about the product or part, the engineers can create a sketch or model of it. These models and sketches help them understand the purpose of the product’s design. Most engineers use computer-aided design (CAD) to create a three-dimensional model of the product, as it helps them analyse every part of the product by viewing an accurate representation of it.
3. Disassemble the product
After developing a model of the product and evaluating its design, the engineers disassemble the product layer by layer. For easier reassembling, they usually organise the product parts in the order that they dismantled those. As they remove each part, they analyse, measure or scan the part or product to know its functionality and use.
4. Evaluate the product
After disassembling every part of the product, the engineers conduct product evaluations and closely study the parts. They try to understand how to improve the product’s quality or fix any errors they found in it. Often, the reverse engineering team documents the essential findings of their evaluation. They can even scan the tracing of the product to help them rebuild it in the future.
5. Reassemble
If reverse engineering aims to rebuild the product, the engineers reassemble the product at this stage. Rebuilding can help the engineers to test their knowledge of the product and allow them to make changes to the product. This can help them create a new or updated version of the original product. Reassembling often allows the engineers to learn more about the product so that they can recreate it.
The reverse-engineering process is specific to the object on which its being performed. However, no matter the context, there are three general steps common to all reverse-engineering efforts. They include:
Information extraction. The object being reverse-engineered is studied, information about its design is extracted and that information is examined to determine how the pieces fit together. In software reverse-engineering, this might require gathering source code and related design documents for study. It may also involve the use of tools, such as a disassembler to break apart the program into its constituent parts.
Modeling. The collected information is abstracted into a conceptual model, with each piece of the model explaining its function in the overall structure. The purpose of this step is to take information specific to the original and abstract it into a general model that can be used to guide the design of new objects or systems. In software reverse-engineering this might take the form of a data flow diagram or a structure chart.
Review. This involves reviewing the model and testing it in various scenarios to ensure it is a realistic abstraction of the original object or system. In software engineering this might take the form of software testing. Once it is tested, the model can be implemented to reengineer the original object.
Companies often use reverse engineering on old electronic components, such as discontinued printed circuit boards (PCBs) and connecting cards. Frequently, the products in question will come from manufacturers that have since gone out of business. If the manufacturer is still in business, they might no longer offer the part. The firms often reverse engineer old electronics for the sake of continuity.
If an old piece of computer equipment had functions that have since been lost amid the subsequent changes in technology, reverse engineering allows manufacturers to rediscover these formulas and bring them up to date. Reverse engineering also enables you to develop components that bridge the new and the old, allowing users of older equipment to connect their devices to modern computing equipment.
In some cases, the only way to obtain the design of an original product is through reverse engineering. With some older products that have not been manufactured for 20 years or more, the original 2D drawings are no longer available. Often, there will be no way to contact the original manufacturer, as the company may no longer be in business.
Companies sometimes use reverse engineering to regain design data on their own long-discontinued products. For example, a small company that has been in businesses for more than 40 years may have manufactured numerous products before the days of computer-aided design and digital file storage. Consequently, these older products may be based on long-lost paper blueprints. Through reverse engineering, companies can regain their lost designs and create archives of their product legacy.
Even if the company still has their paper blueprints, they may want to create a digital version of them to make the plans easier to access and use. The business could use certain reverse engineering techniques to create this digital design file.
Among auto restoration specialists, reverse engineering is sometimes employed to recreate the designs of engines and auto body parts for older vehicles. Using reverse engineering to rebuild engines or recreate hard-to-find parts can make cars from the 1920s through the 1950s drivable again. Thanks to reverse engineering, you could bring a classic vehicle back to life and make it fully functional without changing the design of the car’s systems.
Reverse engineering requires a series of steps to gather precise information on a product’s dimensions. Once collected, you can store the data in digital archives. Often, engineers will enhance the design with new developments and innovations. Sometimes, they will replicate the original model exactly.
Here are a few benefits of reverse engineering:
Exploring existing products: Backward engineering allows you to explore products that already exist. Evaluating the existing products in the market can result in innovation and discovery.
Recreating a product: One of the primary goals of reverse engineering is recreating a product without using a blueprint. Using this process, companies can make an old and outdated product, a less expensive version of a product, an obsolete machine part and a competitor’s product.
Repairing existing products: Companies can repair an existing product using this engineering technique. This can also help them identify common errors in a product’s design and learn how to fix those for future projects.
Discovering product vulnerabilities: Companies can reverse engineer a new product or its prototype as a test. Through this, they can learn about the product in new ways and search for errors, inconsistencies or overall vulnerabilities.
Inspiring innovation: Reverse engineering fosters innovation. It helps engineers connect projects with previous knowledge and develop innovative ideas.
Conducting failure analysis:You can use reverse engineering to analyse why a product did not work as intended.Examining a faulty product through backward engineering can help you identify its damaged parts and repair them.
Performing competitor analysis:An organisation can reverse engineer a competitor’s product to understand how it differs from other products in the market.
Reducing product development costs: By understanding how a competitor manufactures a product, a company can develop cheaper alternative solutions.
The explanation of reverse engineering is that it is a process in which a designer or developer dismantles a product to learn about its design. Traditionally, companies used to reverse engineer physical objects, but today companies can use this process on codes of various applications. Using backward engineering, companies can deconstruct software, aircraft, machines and architectural structures to extract their design information. The reverse engineering process allows you to identify how a company designed a particular part so that you can recreate it.
Usually, companies widely use the backward engineering process to create a replacement part of an obsolete product. This means that engineers mimic a design without the original blueprint. The knowledge gained during the backward engineering process can help a company teach their employees how things work and gain a competitive advantage over others.
Reverse engineering is simply the process of taking a completed object (could be physical or computerized) and see how it compares to a CAD model or lines of code on the computer.
WHAT IS REVERSE ENGINEERING?
Reverse engineering is to take an object that is already completed to reveal its designs, architecture, code or to extract details from the object. Reverse engineering was traditionally used for physical objects like parts, but now reverse engineering is also for code on applications.
REVERSE ENGINEERING BENEFITS
A list of benefits for reverse engineering could go on, but the key benefits for reverse engineering would be:
More in-depth understanding of a completed object
Find faults in the completed object
Run tolerance simulations of completed objects
Run analysis’ of the completed objects
Reproduce a discontinued object
Those are just a few benefits for reverse engineering. The best way to describe reverse engineering and what is possible from reverse engineering said object is basically being a detective on said object you are reverse engineering and copy every little detail. Moreover, your project goals can dictate how much you get out of reverse engineering something.
Using the 3D scanner and the resultant data, we can reverse engineer an object efficiently to generate a CAD model from a physical object that has any kind of complex or freeform shape. Reverse engineering process outputs files in a modifiable structure, with each file then being tailored to meet the varying requirements of every client.
In the end of the day though, going with reverse engineering services might seem like a simple task, but it’s actually a complex task to take what is already completed, study it, and then reproduce it on the computer. Yet, having a goal in place makes it simpler for engineers to help you with your project. So, knowing what you want to achieve from reverse engineering your object is key.
3D reverse engineering finds applications in various industries such as manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and product design. It is particularly useful when dealing with legacy parts, antique objects, or situations where the original design documentation is unavailable. By creating a digital representation of existing objects, engineers and designers can make modifications, improvements, or reproductions based on the captured data.
Reverse engineering is simply the process of taking a completed object (could be physical or computerized) and see how it compares to a CAD model or lines of code on the computer. However, it’s more than just comparing. but:
WHAT IS REVERSE ENGINEERING?
Reverse engineering is to take an object that is already completed to reveal its designs, architecture, code or to extract details from the object. Reverse engineering was traditionally used for physical objects like parts, but now reverse engineering is also for code on applications. An example of reverse engineering is an OEM part from a vehicle that is discontinued by the OEM. You as a third party might want to produce that part for the vehicle. Therefore, you as the third party will reverse engineer the OEM part that is discontinued to be able to effectively produce and manufacture the part. It’s almost like copying the part back into a CAD model. However, reverse engineering can do so much more than just produce a CAD model.
REVERSE ENGINEERING BENEFITS
A list of benefits for reverse engineering could go on, but the key benefits for reverse engineering would be:
More in-depth understanding of a completed object
Find faults in the completed object
Run tolerance simulations of completed objects
Run analysis’ of the completed objects
Reproduce a discontinued object
Those are just a few benefits for reverse engineering. The best way to describe reverse engineering and what is possible from reverse engineering said object is basically being a detective on said object you are reverse engineering and copy every little detail. Moreover, your project goals can dictate how much you get out of reverse engineering something.
Over the past 120 years, manufacturers around the world have produced millions of machine products and parts. Due to continual advances in technology, few of these products have remained relevant for more than several years after their initial release. However, numerous old parts used in machines have stood the test of time. When the part malfunctions or breaks down completely, you replace the component, not the whole device. A process known as reverse engineering makes replacing these parts possible.
What is the purpose of reverse engineering? In any given factory or office building, you’re likely to see manufacturing or computing systems comprised of sophisticated equipment. Typically, the parts in question will range in age from new to more than 20 years old. For these systems to remain intact, various components must be reverse engineered and recreated.
WHAT IS REVERSE ENGINEERING?
Reverse engineering, sometimes called back engineering, is a process in which software, machines, aircraft, architectural structures and other products are deconstructed to extract design information from them. Often, reverse engineering involves deconstructing individual components of larger products. The reverse engineering process enables you to determine how a part was designed so that you can recreate it. Companies often use this approach when purchasing a replacement part from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is not an option.
The reverse engineering process is named as such because it involves working backward through the original design process. However, you often have limited knowledge about the engineering methods that went into creating the product. Therefore, the challenge is to gain a working knowledge of the original design by disassembling the product piece-by-piece or layer-by-layer.
REVERSE ENGINEERING EXAMPLES
Companies often use reverse engineering on old electronic components, such as discontinued printed circuit boards (PCBs) and connecting cards. Frequently, the products in question will come from manufacturers that have since gone out of business. If the manufacturer is still in business, they might no longer offer the part. The firms often reverse engineer old electronics for the sake of continuity.
If an old piece of computer equipment had functions that have since been lost amid the subsequent changes in technology, reverse engineering allows manufacturers to rediscover these formulas and bring them up to date. Reverse engineering also enables you to develop components that bridge the new and the old, allowing users of older equipment to connect their devices to modern computing equipment.
In some cases, the only way to obtain the design of an original product is through reverse engineering. With some older products that have not been manufactured for 20 years or more, the original 2D drawings are no longer available. Often, there will be no way to contact the original manufacturer, as the company may no longer be in business.
Companies sometimes use reverse engineering to regain design data on their own long-discontinued products. For example, a small company that has been in businesses for more than 40 years may have manufactured numerous products before the days of computer-aided design and digital file storage. Consequently, these older products may be based on long-lost paper blueprints. Through reverse engineering, companies can regain their lost designs and create archives of their product legacy.
Even if the company still has their paper blueprints, they may want to create a digital version of them to make the plans easier to access and use. The business could use certain reverse engineering techniques to create this digital design file.
Among auto restoration specialists, reverse engineering is sometimes employed to recreate the designs of engines and auto body parts for older vehicles. Using reverse engineering to rebuild engines or recreate hard-to-find parts can make cars from the 1920s through the 1950s drivable again. Thanks to reverse engineering, you could bring a classic vehicle back to life and make it fully functional without changing the design of the car’s systems.
Reverse engineering requires a series of steps to gather precise information on a product’s dimensions. Once collected, you can store the data in digital archives. Often, engineers will enhance the design with new developments and innovations. Sometimes, they will replicate the original model exactly.
Reverse engineering provides manufacturers with information about the design of a product or component. When done successfully, reverse engineering gives you a virtual copy of the blueprint that went into the original design.
Reverse engineering is perhaps the most accurate way to recreate the designs for items that went out of production decades beforehand. In cases where the original blueprints are long since lost or destroyed, reverse engineering is perhaps the only way to bring such products back to life. If you can obtain a working model of an old product, you can typically trace the steps of its design and use those insights to construct a new model, repair a part or improve future products.
Below are some of the most common uses of reverse engineering.
1. Legacy Parts Replacement
One of the most common reverse engineering applications is legacy parts replacement, which involves examining and reproducing select parts of larger machines to keep them in operation.
For example, a factory might have a large engine compartment that keeps the entire conveyor system running through each day’s work shift. Every once in a while, one of the machine parts will wear out and need to be replaced. If the machine is old, certain parts might no longer be in production, either because the OEM no longer makes the part of is out of business.
While the factory could make a huge investment in a new conveyor system, the preferable option is to retain the same equipment and replace the faulty part. With reverse engineering, you can use a 3D scanner to digitally replicate the design of the defective part. From there, a new copy of the component can be created and installed into the machine.
Depending on the size and complexity of the component in question, the initial cost to have it reverse engineered could exceed the price of a newer or different model. However, once you have created a digital copy of the original design and successfully replicated the part, you can use that information to recreate the component again and again. Reverse engineering allows you to reproduce parts that work in your preferred mechanical setups, regardless of whether the original manufacturers are still in business.
2. Parts Service or Repair
The Data You Gain from Reverse Engineering
If a legacy part or a component the OEM no longer supports needs repair or service, it’s useful to have an understanding of how the product works. This knowledge can help to complete the repair accurately and efficiently. If there aren’t any design documents available, a company may use reverse engineering to create them. You can then use this information to inform how you repair or service the part. The data you gain from reverse engineering can help you determine which components you need to replace to fix a given problem. It can also inform your repair process by helping you better understand how best to access, remove and replace a certain part.
3. Failure Analysis
Reverse engineering techniques can play a valuable role in failure analysis. If a machine fails, you may need to take it apart or examine design files to determine why. Once you have this information, you know how to fix or improve the product so that it functions properly again.
Examining a product using reverse engineering can reveal damaged parts of faulty designs. Looking at digital design files created through reverse engineering can also reveal flaws and help inform how you plan to repair a piece of equipment.
4. Parts Improvement
Reverse engineering is also used for parts improvement. You might need to alter a component after conducting a failure analysis, or a particular might just be due for an upgrade. If no replacement or alternative part is available on the market, you could have the part reverse engineered to create a copy of the original design. From there, you could modify the design for improved performance.
If a machine requires stronger joints or weld reinforcements, the faulty parts will be examined for their measurements and redesigned with increased thickness or stronger metals. Through reverse engineering, you can determine which dimensions must be maintained and which aspects you can change. If you could combine two or more parts into a single, more functional component, reverse engineering could bring that fact to light.
5. Diagnostics and Problem-Solving
Reverse engineering can also be used for diagnostics and problem-solving in a sequence of industrial processes. In a factory setting, the flow of operations can sometimes slow due to a faulty or underperforming function. When a manufacturing system consists of numerous machines and components, it can be difficult to pinpoint the source of the problem. Through reverse engineering, you can determine how everything works as one and use that knowledge to identify where things can and do go wrong.
The purpose of reverse-engineering is to find out how an object or system works. There are a variety of reasons to do this. Reverse-engineering can be used to learn how something works and to recreate the object or to create a similar object with added enhancements.
Often the goal of reverse-engineering software or hardware is to find a way to create a similar product more inexpensively or because the original product is no longer available. Reverse-engineering in information technology is also used to address compatibility issues and make the hardware or software work with other hardware, software or operating systems that it wasn’t originally compatible with.
Reverse-engineering is the act of dismantling an object to see how it works. It is done primarily to analyze and gain knowledge about the way something works but often is used to duplicate or enhance the object. Many things can be reverse-engineered, including software, physical machines, military technology and even biological functions related to how genes work.
The practice of reverse-engineering as applied to computer hardware and software is taken from older industries. Software reverse-engineering focuses on a program’s machine code — the string of 0s and 1s that are sent to the logic processor. Program language statements are used to turn the machine code back into the original source code.
Depending on the technology, the knowledge gained during reverse-engineering can be used to repurpose obsolete objects, do a security analysis, gain a competitive advantage or simply to teach someone about how something works. No matter how the knowledge is used or what it relates to, reverse-engineering is the process of gaining that knowledge from a finished object.
Companies often use reverse engineering on old electronic components, such as discontinued printed circuit boards (PCBs) and connecting cards. Frequently, the products in question will come from manufacturers that have since gone out of business. If the manufacturer is still in business, they might no longer offer the part. The firms often reverse engineer old electronics for the sake of continuity.
If an old piece of computer equipment had functions that have since been lost amid the subsequent changes in technology, reverse engineering allows manufacturers to rediscover these formulas and bring them up to date. Reverse engineering also enables you to develop components that bridge the new and the old, allowing users of older equipment to connect their devices to modern computing equipment.
In some cases, the only way to obtain the design of an original product is through reverse engineering. With some older products that have not been manufactured for 20 years or more, the original 2D drawings are no longer available. Often, there will be no way to contact the original manufacturer, as the company may no longer be in business.
Companies sometimes use reverse engineering to regain design data on their own long-discontinued products. For example, a small company that has been in businesses for more than 40 years may have manufactured numerous products before the days of computer-aided design and digital file storage. Consequently, these older products may be based on long-lost paper blueprints. Through reverse engineering, companies can regain their lost designs and create archives of their product legacy.
Even if the company still has their paper blueprints, they may want to create a digital version of them to make the plans easier to access and use. The business could use certain reverse engineering techniques to create this digital design file.
Among auto restoration specialists, reverse engineering is sometimes employed to recreate the designs of engines and auto body parts for older vehicles. Using reverse engineering to rebuild engines or recreate hard-to-find parts can make cars from the 1920s through the 1950s drivable again. Thanks to reverse engineering, you could bring a classic vehicle back to life and make it fully functional without changing the design of the car’s systems.
Reverse engineering requires a series of steps to gather precise information on a product’s dimensions. Once collected, you can store the data in digital archives. Often, engineers will enhance the design with new developments and innovations. Sometimes, they will replicate the original model exactly.
The reverse-engineering process is specific to the object on which its being performed. However, no matter the context, there are three general steps common to all reverse-engineering efforts. They include:
Information extraction. The object being reverse-engineered is studied, information about its design is extracted and that information is examined to determine how the pieces fit together. In software reverse-engineering, this might require gathering source code and related design documents for study. It may also involve the use of tools, such as a disassembler to break apart the program into its constituent parts.
Modeling. The collected information is abstracted into a conceptual model, with each piece of the model explaining its function in the overall structure. The purpose of this step is to take information specific to the original and abstract it into a general model that can be used to guide the design of new objects or systems. In software reverse-engineering this might take the form of a data flow diagram or a structure chart.
Review. This involves reviewing the model and testing it in various scenarios to ensure it is a realistic abstraction of the original object or system. In software engineering this might take the form of software testing. Once it is tested, the model can be implemented to reengineer the original object.
Reverse engineering is a very important tool for new product development, and we still need it
Reverse engineering is very important for new product development，we can discuss each other
reverse engineering is still an important design method in industrial design
At present, we need it, I am not sure Whether in the future, 3D print can replace it or not
what about 3D print? can it replace reverse engineering?
reverse engineering is very important in our project. we really need it
Auto industry certainly need reverse engineering
reverse engineering is very important in new product development.
Informative article, totally what I wanted to find.
in our company, reverse engineering is an essential tool
yes! reverse engineering is very important for new product’s development
Reverse engineering is very important for our products
most Industrial designers absolutely like to say that.
I appreciate you sharing this article.Much thanks again.For a new product development,Reverse Engineering is very important
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