Reverse engineering 101

Portable CMMs and software make reverse engineering useful for modifications, new designs, and duplicating parts without drawings. A portable CMM digitally captures the position of the turbine blade, root, and shaft surfaces. In this case, a measuring pattern should follow concentric circles around the hub. A completed image can be manipulated by various CAD programs to add surfaces to the image, measure uniformity of individual blades, or even test flow properties in a simulation program. Production equipment and lines can be fine-tuned after capturing critical dimensions using reverse-engineering techniques. In this case, a laser tracker, temporarily in the center of the production line, can measure to any spot on the machine. Laser-tracking devices such as this one have a range of 230 ft with up to