Creative Commons

The dissertation applies to demonstrate the Reverse Engineering of mechanical parts with freeform surfaces. Reverse engineering of mechanical parts is used to design spare parts for the following reasons: - When the spare part is not anymore available in the market - To reduce the cost of an original part by manufacturing it in house - to redesign and improve the function of the spare part For this research an impeller is chosen as object in order to generate a 3D cad model by using reverse engineering processes. The impeller is handled as the most representative part of mechanical spare parts with the following details: - freeform surfaces - operation in assembly - high technical requirements for functionality An impeller is used in many mechanical applications like turbines & pumps. The impellers are operating under difficult circumstances with high temperatures and with high speed. The replacement of the impeller is very often required after specific operation hours or after material failure. Since it is an expensive spare part the reverse engineering of it could be offer many benefits such as the redesign and improvement of the operation. For the reverse engineering of the impeller a Laser Scanner – Non Contact Measurement is used. The final outcome of the technology will be evaluated regarding to their accuracy and the difficulty of applying. For the evaluation a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) with touch trigger probe – Tactile Measurement with a high accuracy will be used. With the CMM the part will be re-measured and the measured data is compared to the created 3D CAD model with a specialized measuring software.