Additive Manufacturing Tools for Reverse Engineering?

Hybrid additive-subtractive manufacturing and user-friendly software are needed to meet the need for edge manufacturing and ease-of-use. Hybrid manufacturing provides best of both worlds with respect to rapid production, production rate, and dimensional tolerance. This can be applied to repair, reverse engineering, and reproduction of critical components in when supply chains or operational environments limit access to traditional manufacturing.  Engeniusmicro has developed hybrid additive-subtractive prototypes and user-friendly software.  We propose to use this existing AM hardware and software for reverse engineering, repair, and reproduction of electronics, circuit boards, and structural components.The effort will meet the following challenges: 1) multi-material printing, 2) integrated scanning/design/modeling for reverse engineering and 3) training/proficiency burden. Multi-material additive manufacturing will identify suitable materials for reverse engineering. The material survey will define existing and near-term capabilities as well as long-term recommendations for part production. Integrated scanning/design/modeling tools will include scanning and measurements to generate a virtual model of a sample. Integrated design tools will enable modifications or corrections of imported scans without secondary software. Modeling tools will include common file exports to power simulation tools or integration of open-source mechanical FEA into the control software. The effort will reduce training burden by defining process parameters, process rules, and user prompts to ensure quality assurance and production yield. Finally, the proposed system can be air-gapped and operate independently to increase data and operational security.The proposed effort develops additive manufacturing hardware and software for rapid virtual model generation from existing parts and provides an easy-to-follow workflow to replicate parts.