3D scanning is the process of taking a physical object and using one of several ways to turn that physical object into a three dimensional representation of it that can be manipulated in computer programs such as CAD software, or can be used for taking accurate measurements without having to do them all manually.

3D scanning has been around since 1960s, and there are different ways that 3D scanning can be accomplished, using lights or lazers for example. Up until recently however this process has been very costly and required specialized equipment that was usually static and could easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars. This has meant it has been prohibitive for most people, unless they were willing to pay for a 3D scanning service.

The type of 3D scanning we’re going to talk about today however is called photogrammetry. Essentially the way photogrammetry works is that you use a camera to take lots of photographs of a static object from many different angles. These photos are then stitched together in 3D scanning software to create a 3D model.

While this sounds complicated, with the rise of high quality smartphone cameras and 3D scanning smartphone apps, with a bit of practice and a relatively new smartphone almost anyone can start 3D scanning!

Why would you want to 3D scan something with your phone?

Apart from the inherent novelty value of making cool 3D scans with something you can carry in your pocket, there are a lot of different uses for personal 3D scanning. Some people use 3D scanning to make realistic representations of themselves to use for avatars in 3D worlds. Others use 3D scanning to make house plans or take measurements that would be much more tedious to do manually.

What we’re really interested in though is the potential to use 3D scanning technologies for 3D printing applications, and to streamline the process of reverse engineering and prototyping products.

3D printing uses

The possibilities for creating 3D models ready for printing using smartphone 3D scanning are almost endless.

For example:

• This article explains a great way to use 3d scanning to create a CAD file of a unique architectural feature a couple wanted to incorporate into their new house.
• Ever wanted your own action figure? Get a friend to scan yourself and 3d print the model. This can be a quicker and easier option than using a photograph for 3D character modelling.
• Want to create realistic model scenery for a railway set or props for a miniature wargame? You could scan an old, abandoned railway station and then 3D print a miniature version.
• Really like a particular statue or ancient monument at a museum? 3D scan it so you can remember it for posterity, or to 3D print a replica for your living area. If you want to go down the rabbit hole in this regard, read this paper on 3D scanning for museums and cultural heritage applications.

You’re basically only limited by your imagination. If you don’t have a 3D printer or the skills to clean up the file for printing that’s no problem at all, we can help!

3D scanning application: Check out how to use 3D scanning to create 3D printed chess pieces!

Reverse engineering uses

Not too long ago we were approached by the Ritz Carlton to create protective casings for a model cruise liner, because it had previously been damaged in transport, was expensive to fix, and they didn’t want to have that issue again in the future! This project used 3D scanning to create a 3D file for the model which we were able to use in negative to create protective foam sidings.

There are many similar reverse engineering uses for 3D scanning. Imagine that you work restoring old cars or furniture, where the parts you need are no longer available to purchase from anywhere. If you are able to scan the parts, you can then manufacture more of the parts on your own for any future restorations. It can even be used for one off pieces, for example cloning a missing part which is mirrored on both sides of an object.

You could even scan an object that you want to make an addition to – say for example a pot holder for a specific type or brand of pot – cutting out the guesswork and accurate measurements of the product that would be required if you were going to prototype your product idea from scratch.

Prototyping uses

For simple parts and products, all we need to get started with designing and prototyping your product is a sketch with some dimensions.

If you are working on a more complex project however, and like to begin with manual prototypes from cardboard, foam or other similar building materials, 3D scanning can be a great help. Make your physical prototype, and once you’re happy with it, then it can be scanned and turned it into a 3D CAD file ready for refining and 3D printing as a prototype, and then eventually for manufacturing.

How do you get started 3D scanning with a smartphone?

This isn’t a tutorial on 3D scanning with a smartphone – there are plenty of those online already, and once you download an app you can simply learn through experimentation with the software. But to get started it might be helpful to know where to look.

Some phones are starting to build 3D scanning technology into their operating systems. For example check out this promo for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10’s 3D scanning capabilities:

3D scanning software also comes as standard with Sony’s latest Xperia models.

There are also many standalone smartphone apps for 3D scanning available. Most of these come with a small fee, but the amount you’ll pay for the app is nothing compared to the cost of a complete photogrammetry set up (which can require many high quality cameras) or the use of professional 3D scanning services.

Here is a good example walkthrough of how to use a free 3D scanning app with your smartphone:

What to do once you have your 3D scan

Send it to us! Because your 3D scan, while good, may not be up to professional standards, it may need to be cleaned up if you want to use it to 3D print.

If you’re using 3d scanning to reverse engineer a part or to prototype a product, we can use that as a starting point to finalize your CAD drawings, and then to begin manufacturing your product.

Of course if all this seems like too much hassle for you, we can help you with all parts of the process. In most cases all we need to get started is a rough sketch with some dimensions on the back of a napkin or envelope

If you’d like to get a quote, give us a call on , get in touch with us through our live chat, or send us more info about your project through our quote form. We look forward to hearing from you!

Jason Vander Griendt

Jason Vander Griendt is a Mechanical Engineering Technician with years of experience working at major companies such as SNC Lavalin Inc, Hatch Ltd. Siemens and Gerdau Ameristeel. He is the CEO of JCAD – Inc., a company he started in 2006 after seeing a gap in the market for businesses who could assist clients through the entire product design and manufacturing process.

Jason has been featured in Forbes, has had his businesses analyzed and discussed in multiple start-up books, was a previous winner of the Notable8 Digital Innovator of the year award, and is a regular guest on business panels and podcasts. Email Jason at jason@jcadusa.com or follow him on LinkedIn.

The post Easy 3D Scanning With a Smartphone For Reverse Engineering, Prototyping Products and 3D Printing appeared first on J-CAD Inc. 1.888.202.2052.

Picture being a museum curator tasked with restoring delicate, irreplaceable works from centuries ago. A chair back is missing an ornate decoration and the void sticks out like a sore thumb. Where do you turn? The carpenter or wood worker who carved it is long gone.

You do not have to be a professional car restorer or spend years getting an art history degree to feel the pain of being unable to finish a project. Even the hobbyists who toil in their garages or workrooms alone for hours on end can see a task come to a screeching halt due the lack of a necessary part.

The 3D printer has changed the game for those who work with old cars or furniture. The benefits of these printers came on slowly, with great expense. However, advancements in the technology, accompanied by less costly equipment and the emergence of professional help on demand has made 3D printing accessible to everyone.

Here are three case studies in the positive, revolutionizing impacts 3D printers have had on the worlds of auto and furniture restoration.

The Late Night Car Connoisseur

Jay Leno gained fame after replacing Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show in 1992. For those who like to be in bed prior to midnight, you might know him as one of the greatest car collectors to ever live.

Leno has well over 250 vehicles in his collection with nearly half being models created in the 1940s and 1950s. As you can imagine, mass production of parts for many of his “toys” is nonexistent.

As his time on late night television was drawing to a close, Leno spent more time with his new obsession: the many cars in his garage(s). Leno not only likes to collect and restore cars, he likes them to run. He quickly came to understand that the lack of a part or two led to many classics being covered and put in a corner to slowly fade away.

“There are cars sitting in garages around the country, and they haven’t moved in years for lack of some part,” Leno said in a 2009 Popular Mechanics article. Jay Leno virtually started the 3D printing of obsolete parts. When Jay needs a part that he cannot find, he prints a 3D rendering, creates a mold, and casts the part in the appropriate material.

Of course, when he started, the costs were prohibitive. However, the past decade has seen a decrease in cost and a rise in expertise and specialty printing professionals.

A Chair Fit for a Queen

Zoe Allen is tasked with maintaining all the gilded furniture and frames featured at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. A run in with a suite of furniture from the pre-French Revolution period forced her to experiment with 3D printing.

A chair belonging to none other than Marie Antoinette featured ornate, hand carved elements including a crest highlighting the initials, “M.A.”, at the top of the chair back. Sadly, one half of the crest was missing.

As Zoe put it, “With each piece in the suite being hand carved it could not be expected that any two elements would be exactly the same…therefore the most sensible option seemed to be to copy and make a mirror image of what was already there.”

A 3D printer allowed Zoe and her team to make a replica of the opposite side of the chair by copying the existing piece, 3D printing a mold in the reverse, and casting a new piece. Voila! The queen’s chair – restored. If you’d like to do something similar to Zoe’s team but need to find out how much does an online 3D printing service cost look no further. We can help you out with all online 3D printing needs.

Impacts on the Hobbyist

You don’t have to own expensive 3D printing equipment or restore items worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to feel the need for a 3D printed part. Some companies, like Daimler, have been using 3D printing to reduce the need for storage space and bring maintenance costs down.

As a hobbyist, 3D printing may be intimidating. Where do you start? How do you create a rendering of the part? There are so many questions and the time spent researching or learning could be better spent attending to your projects.

Seek the help, guidance, and expertise of companies specializing in all phases of the 3D printing process like us here at JCAD. By putting our expert knowledge to use, you can keep your project on track and get on the road (or in the seat) enjoying your restoration sooner rather than later!

Give us a call on 1.888.202.2052, fill out one of the quote forms on the site, use the chat widget in the bottom right hand corner of the site or send us an email at info@jcadusa.com and tell us about your project. We’d love to help you bring it to fruition!

What else can you use CAD design for? How about using computer aided design software for creating jewelry?

You might also be interested in learning how parts are designed for 3D printing.

Jason Vander Griendt

Jason Vander Griendt is a Mechanical Engineering Technician with years of experience working at major companies such as SNC Lavalin Inc, Hatch Ltd. Siemens and Gerdau Ameristeel. He is the CEO of JCAD – Inc., a company he started in 2006 after seeing a gap in the market for businesses who could assist clients through the entire product design and manufacturing process.

Jason has been featured in Forbes, has had his businesses analyzed and discussed in multiple start-up books, was a previous winner of the Notable8 Digital Innovator of the year award, and is a regular guest on business panels and podcasts. Email Jason at jason@jcadusa.com or follow him on LinkedIn.

The post 3D Printing for Car and Furniture Restoration appeared first on J-CAD Inc. 1.888.202.2052.

In engineering, sometimes you don’t have a physical component’s schemes, documentation or technical data, that’s when reverse engineering comes in handy.

As the process of extracting information from an existing product and then duplicating it, reverse engineering goes through the design process in the opposite direction, into developing a new product based on the extracted information from a product which is already in circulation.

This is generally done by breaking the system down to its basic components and analyzing their interrelationships, then developing a Part-To-CAD representation of it.

Reverse engineering is very common in a variety of fields, and it’s considered a viable method of engineering with various uses, as it allows the component’s data to be used for 3D printing, achieving manufacturing and production upgrades, and getting input data for software analysis.

But why do you need Reverse Engineering?

There are a variety of situations where you may find yourself considering reverse engineering as the most cost-efficient solution — even sometimes not cost-efficient, but the only solution available — for meeting your project goals.

Here is a list of circumstances where you can use reverse engineering to your advantage:

Understanding a product and its technology

You may be struggling to come out with upgrades on your product, or you may want to implement a technology you’ve seen and can’t find a way to understand it.

In those cases, we suggest a professional product analysis, based on the understanding of its functionality and — by a process of reverse engineering — restructuring your product. Our team will aid you with that, let us know what you need, and we’ll give you a quote on your project!

Study your competitors

If you need to gather understanding around a new product on the market, or about what a competitor is doing with their new machine, you don’t need to (and certainly shouldn’t) copy your competitors outright.

Instead, our approach would be to study through a process of disassembling and redesign. This is an ethical approach that might lead you to detect flaws or important elements you could’ve missed, and it will definitely let you make the upgrades you need to succeed.

Update your product’s documentation

There are situations where you may need to update your product’s information or documentation because the original designers didn’t provide adequate instructions.

Reverse engineering creates a solution for when you are missing schemes, technical data or drafts, or when their information is inaccurate.

Original supplier won’t provide

Sometimes the original manufacturer of a needed component disappears, or they just can’t handle your supply needs for additional parts (and a client needs them!).

If this happens, you can turn to reverse engineering as a tool to retrieve part data in CAD form, before moving on to manufacture the missing part for yourself.

Lots of manufacturers also do reverse engineering to upgrade their production lines, seeking cost-efficient solutions and reduced manufacturing times.

Product Compatibility and Interoperation

It is a must for your products to be constantly updated in line with developing technologies. Reverse engineering can allow you to extend your product’s compatibility, thus giving you the ability to maintain your status and acceptance within the market.

Also, it allows you to accurately measure the quality and standards of your product, and see if it still fits the advertising/marketing specifications for the current market.

If you reverse engineer a product after it has been out for awhile in the market, you can gather inspiration and insight, and redesign your product for further upgrades and better sales into the future!

Any questions? Please give us a call at 1.888.202.2052 or email jason@jcadusa.com. We’re here to help!

Jason Vander Griendt

Jason Vander Griendt is a Mechanical Engineering Technician with years of experience working at major companies such as SNC Lavalin Inc, Hatch Ltd. Siemens and Gerdau Ameristeel. He is the CEO of JCAD – Inc., a company he started in 2006 after seeing a gap in the market for businesses who could assist clients through the entire product design and manufacturing process.

Jason has been featured in Forbes, has had his businesses analyzed and discussed in multiple start-up books, was a previous winner of the Notable8 Digital Innovator of the year award, and is a regular guest on business panels and podcasts. Email Jason at jason@jcadusa.com or follow him on LinkedIn.

The post Reverse Engineering Examples appeared first on J-CAD Inc. 1.888.202.2052.

Reverse engineering is the process by which an existing product or component is duplicated with the assistance of computer modelling software and 3d printers or other manufacturing processes. In reverse engineering, a product is analysed to identify its components and their interconnected relationships, develop designs of the product in a 3d rendering program and then build a physical replica following the original design. While this sounds fairly complicated it doesn’t have to be. For instance many of our clients need one off parts recreated – for instance a furniture restorer contacted us to recreate pieces of a barbers chair that could no longer be sourced. To recreate something like this all we need are drawings like those to the right. Either draw or photograph the part that needs replicating, write down some measurements for us and we’ll get to work. You’ll have your product or part in no time!

Reverse engineering is a common practice in various fields. For example in the automotive industries, consumer products, mechanical designs, electronics, chemical and microchip industries see a lot of reverse engineering action. It’s quite common to see rival manufacturers purchase one new product in the market and try to learn all about how it operates and how it’s designed by disassembling it. While this is not necessarily ethical, it’s common knowledge for instance that within a few days or even a few hours of a new shoe being produced by a large company, there will already be factories in China producing replicas that are almost identical.

Here are some examples of reverse engineering.

How Products Are Reverse Engineered

Reverse engineering facilitates the duplication of an actual product by reproducing its physical features, dimensions and tangible properties. Before trying reverse engineering, a planned life-cycle review and cost/benefit study should be performed to support the reverse engineering schemes. Reverse engineering can be cost-effective provided that the products to be reverse-engineered indicate a high potential for investment or can be duplicated in large amounts. Of course it is not ethical to simply copy someone else’s work and then sell it, so if it will be used it should be as a base to work from and make significant changes or improvements to so that you are not plagiarising the original creator. Reverse engineering of a component may be done even if it is not cost-effective if the component is unquestionably needed and is based on a critical need.

Reverse engineering can also get very sophisticated. In some cases it can involve obtaining three-dimensional location data in the point cloud by using laser scanners or computed tomography. A geometrical map is then created based on the surface data obtained.

A polymesh is made from the surface data, utilising CAD design software. The polymesh is then refined by sending the Non-uniform Levelheaded B-spline Bends Surfaces (NURBS) through a purification process before rendering the cutter apparatus pathways for computer aided manufacturing (CAM). At last, the CAM process creates the physical part. That was a lot of big words! If that sounds very complicated don’t worry too much, we know what we’re doing. If you have a part that needs to be reverse engineered let us know and we’ll explain the best process to allow you to do it.

Computer aided design in the past has been fairly blocky and unnatural. Technology has progressed a long way in the last few years, however, allowing us to create organic forms, that previously might have been challenging or even impossible to manufacture. This process is further helped by using the physical model as the source of data for the CAD model. This is called the part-to-CAD process and is used to reverse engineer a variety of products.

Reverse engineering begins with an item, part or product and works backwards through the manufacturing process in order to create as perfect a duplicate as possible. If you have something that needs to be recreated, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today!

Jason Vander Griendt

Jason Vander Griendt is a Mechanical Engineering Technician with years of experience working at major companies such as SNC Lavalin Inc, Hatch Ltd. Siemens and Gerdau Ameristeel. He is the CEO of JCAD – Inc., a company he started in 2006 after seeing a gap in the market for businesses who could assist clients through the entire product design and manufacturing process.

Jason has been featured in Forbes, has had his businesses analyzed and discussed in multiple start-up books, was a previous winner of the Notable8 Digital Innovator of the year award, and is a regular guest on business panels and podcasts. Email Jason at jason@jcadusa.com or follow him on LinkedIn.

The post What is Reverse Engineering? appeared first on J-CAD Inc. 1.888.202.2052.