An approach for reverse engineering and redesign of additive manufactured spare parts

Abstract

The spare parts play a vital role in sustaining the operation and longevity of products and systems, but their unavailability can lead to prolonged downtime or expensive replacements. The integration of 3D scanning and Additive Manufacturing (AM) presents a promising path for spare part production. However, to utilise the full potential of AM, sometimes, redesign of the original part is needed. This paper investigates and proposes a new approach that integrates reverse engineering and redesign of an original part based on functional analysis to support the manufacturing of AM spare parts.