May 19, 2015 | By Simon
When it comes to learning how to use various 3D modeling programs - particularly those that are designed for creating manufacturable products - one of the most satisfying and efficient ways of learning is to disassemble an existing, manufactured product and - through the use of calipers to measure each part - recreate the parts in the dedicated CAD program until an understanding of their original design intent has been reached. In the real-world, this process is called reverse-engineering and is done commonly to better understand products in a market category - such as those of a competitor.
For many industrial design and mechanical engineering students, the process of reverse-engineering a product is oftentimes a required class assignment for classes such as those that teach SolidWorks or Rhino skills and can include the disassembly and modeling of everything from a computer mouse to a remote controlled car or anything that a student feels that they are capable of.
Of course, thanks to lower cost of 3D printing and the introduction of 3D printing in more universities, students are now able to convert these reverse-engineering efforts into actual physical products that they can then reassemble as their own ‘product designs’ based off of what they have measured and modeled. This is exactly what Patrick Lyons, a mechanical engineering student from the University of Texas at Austin recently did for one of his classes. Lyons is also a member of the UT Speech Team and is pursuing a certificate in both Business Foundations and Elements of Computing.
Lyons, along with three other mechanical engineering students in his class, were tasked by their teacher to take an original product, disassemble it, model the assembly in SolidWorks, and then 3D print the individual parts before assembling them back into a 3D printed replica. Of course - with Texas being the land of cowboys - the four mechanical engineers chose a harmless cap gun as their product of choice to disassemble, model and 3D print.
“We decided as a group that a cap gun would be cool to model, redesign, and 3D print because it was something that we'd all used before,” said Lyons, “Sort of a "staple" of the type of toys we liked to play with when we were kids. We were encouraged to come up with a creative team name, and I pretty immediately came up with "Post a Traumatic Engineering Disorder" and the whole team liked it, so we rolled with it."
In order to successfully reverse-engineer the cap gun, the team began the process by disassembling the product to reveal all of its individual parts - including various springs and fastening hardware. After examining the function of each part of the design, the team brainstormed how to make each part simpler while still maintaining its original function - an option that was given with the assignment to better understand the process of rapid prototyping.
Once all of the parts had been analyzed, they were divided amongst the team members to be measured with calipers and modeled in SolidWorks, which they had been using for roughly 3 months up until this project. Once the parts were finished being modeled, they were quickly analyzed using the built-in material simulation features in SolidWorks before being exported as an STL.
"Fairly recently, UT created a MakerSpace on the first floor (underground) of the Mechanical Engineering building." Lyons told 3ders.org. "Inside the MakerSpace are 8 MakerBot 3D printers that students can experiment with and print anything we like for fun/practice. The final product (the final reverse engineered parts shown in the green in the picture) is printed out from the Innovation Station at UT. The Innovation Station is essentially a double decker MakerBot 3D printer with incredible print quality (smooth edges and refined details on all the pieces). The Innovation Station allows you to send STLs/.thing files to the printer from anywhere, and it notifies you by text and email when your print is ready to pick up."
The final, resulting 3D printed cap gun featured seven 3D printed parts and required two springs and three screws to finalize into a functional assembly that was capable of firing off caps. "Since the goal of this project was to learn the process of rapid prototyping and reverse engineering of non-readily-purchasable parts, we never actually put the cap gun together because we didn't have the necessary screws and springs." Lyons told us. "But based on the assembly formed on SolidWorks, everything would have fit together perfectly and functioned properly."
"Additionally, we assembled all of the pieces together into a computer modeled assembly (also an easy task with SolidWorks) and created individual dimensioned drawings of each part so that essentially anyone could look at the computer sketches and be able to exactly recreate the part." Lyons added.
"Behind the scenes of all the physical and tangible work on the 3D printed parts, our team also researched and wrote several pages of information in regard to customer's perspective versus engineer's perspective on the cap gun's design and appearance, further redesign recommendations, analysis of material choices, functional requirements of all the cap gun's subsystems, made charts and graphs to further break down the system and plan the process of its redesign, and we created hand-drawn sketches of all seven parts as well as an exploded assembly sketch."
While the team doesn’t have plans to pursue the project any further, they are ecstatic about the skills that they learned by successfully completing the reverse engineering process.
“This was by far the coolest project I've ever been a part of,” said Lyons.
“Seeing the end result was really amazing after so many months of planning and work. 3D printing is an incredible industry, and the University of Texas at Austin is really providing the opportunities necessary for all of us to learn additive manufacturing. I can't wait to see what I print next!”
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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So cool.
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