Review of reverse engineering systems – current state of the art

Reverse engineering (RE) has been widely applied in many segments of industry when digital or geometric models of existing physical objects are unavailable. This paper details components of RE systems and describes the needs for RE in manufacturing industries. Commonly used contact and non-contact scanning techniques are described. Possible interfaces with other manufacturing processes, especially 3D printing (3DP), are discussed. This paper also describes new trends in the field that include increased speed, accuracy, and level of automation in the future. Finally, a discussion on two major tolerance issues in terms of integrating RE and 3DP are presented.