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| What is Reverse Engineering? Well this
recent project is a nice example. A customer wanted to put a bigger
engine in his modern Triumph, which meant also a bigger throttle
body. The existing aircleaner was plastic and served as a mounting
point for various parts and also as the battery box. The challenge
was to increase the size of the intake which meant I would have
to copy the front half of the existing aircleaner, get it in CAD,
modify it to fit the larger intake and then print it. To make
it extra interesting the customer and his bike were in Spain and
I am located in the Netherlands.... |
| He sent me the existing aircleaner plus
one that fit the new big engine but not his frame. He suggested
I use the bigger intake rubber and make it fit in the existing
aircleaner. I removed everything that could be removed and made
laserscans of all the parts: |
| The next step involved turning the scan
of the front half into a "clean" CAD model, a scan file
consists of millions of small triangles, and I needed to turn
those into solid CAD geometry. This postprocessing is usually
the most time consuming part. Then I removed the existing small
intake rubber and superimposed the bigger intake rubber in the
correct position. |
| I modified the front half to fit the bigger
intake rubber and showed this to my custiomer in Spain,. who took
some measurements and concluded the increased width might interfere
with the wiring harness. We decided to not use the big intake
rubber he had sent me but to use some silicone rubber hose with
the same inside diameter. I updated the CAD model agin and this
version was approved, so I had it printed (by Shapeways) and reassembled
the whole thing. |
All has been sent back to Spain and the
customer can now complete his engine swap.
Quite a tricky part that would have been very difficult to make
without laserscanning and 3d printing. |
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