Management of the Reverse Engineering Process in the Plastics Industry

The management of the Reverse Engineering (RE) process for polymeric parts is a relatively complicated one. Composition on this market segment is tough due to the fact that approximately 85% of the machinery and equipment industry has migrated from the steel parts industry to the plastics industry over the last 30 years. This is why not only old mechanical parts and assemblies are subject to the RE process, but also new parts / products that competition is trying to reproduce. Therefore, the goal is to achieve the RE process of superior quality at the lowest cost and in the shortest possible time (if possible in a fully automated system). The RE process management involves selecting the hardware, selecting the RE software, and adopting the proper technique for obtaining surfaces (or solids, as the case may be). All these steps depend on the quality of the product to be achieved and the speed at which the results are obtained. The paper presents a concrete case of RE, solved by a certain process, but also other possible variants, as well as their impact on the quality of the final product (precision / price / effort).