Reverse Engineering of Polymeric Solid Models Using Refractive Index Matching (RIM)

Reverse engineering (RE) techniques allows the creation of 3-D CAD files from a solid model. The benefits of reverse engineering are not >new. to the industrial design and manufacturing<arena though wide spread applications are yet to be seen. A novel approach is used to reverse engineer polymeric parts with its internal features in aJow. cOst, non-destructive manner. Solids created from polymers with anindex of refraction matching thatof an immersion liquid are reverSe engineered using a CCD .calllera. The images are then used to create digital solid models from a physical··model. Design·and development of this novel ilow costtool for reverse engineering ofpolymeric solid models is described in this paper.