Reverse Engineering Production Tooling

THE CLIENT’S CRITICAL ISSUE

A major aircraft manufacturer wanted to increase production of a highly successful executive jet. Digital data did not exist for a series of drill fixtures used in the jet’s manufacturing. These physical tools would need to be reverse engineered with high accuracy for the quality assurance department to be able to test the tooling designs digitally.

THE DIMENSIONAL ENGINEERING SOLUTION

The aircraft manufacturer awarded Dimensional Engineering to the task, relying on our experience and expertise in reverse engineering. With tolerances as tight as 0.0005 inches on the drill fixture, we knew we had a challenge on our hands. We determined the need to combine the technologies of a laser tracker and a laser scanning arm in capturing the required digital data.

The tracker created a coordinate system, then collected the centers of each drill bushing, and captured hinge details without moving its position. The non-contact laser scanner mapped the topology of the fixture’s surface. When data was collected on the entire fixture, it was post-processed into a highly accurate, fully parameterized solid model.

THE VALUE WE PROVIDED

The finished model documented every detail of the drill fixture in a complete bill of materials (BOM) list. The manufacturer’s quality assurance department certified the data to ensure that the required accuracy criteria were fully met. Once QA approved the data, it was used to duplicate the series of tools.