Read Consulting LLC
1435 Fulton Rd.
Santa Rosa, CA 95403
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www.readconsulting.com
White Paper: Reverse Engineering
Thomas L. Read, Ph.D. Read Consulting
Before expending the effort necessary to reverse engineer a device or object, it must be definite that the object under study is not covered by one or more patents. This avoids a dispute over patent violations. Once it has been established that no patent coverage exists, one can use multiple techniques to reverse engineer a product. These are summarized below:
Physical Dimensions:
Simple Parts: For simple parts a micrometer and/or calipers can be used to determine specific dimensions.
Complex Parts: Either a tool maker’s microscope or coordinate measuring machine (CMM) are valuable. The CMM is a digital device that uses a probe to very accurately determine dimensions. It can present these dimensions in a format that is compatible with Auto CAD (a popular drawing program).
Internal Geometry: This might require accurate X-ray examination and/or crosssectioning along with accurate measurement of the exposed elements.
Caution: Although dimensions of existing parts are measurable, one cannot measure the tolerances for these parts. These must be determined by other methods.
Multiple Parts: One could measure a statistically significant number of representative parts and from these calculate probable part tolerances.
Understand the Parts Function: One can also determine the tolerances from the function of the part. For example, how it interacts with other parts in an assembly. In another case, its function can be used to determine its tolerances; this would includea consideration such as use temperature.
Materials Composition:
Introduction: After the dimensions have been determined, it is important to determine the material from which the device has been made. There are various categories of materials, and each requires a different analytical technique.
Plastics (i.e. organic or polymer materials): The general type of material can be determined using Fourier Transform Infra Red analysis (FTIR). For more detail one can use several thermal analysis techniques. The two most widely used are Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). These can be used to narrow down the composition.
Metals: In general, metals are normally identified with spectrographic analysis in combination with wet chemistry; however, some of the exotic alloys require more