Smart Manufacturing

Reverse engineering has evolved from a largely manual process used to reproduce legacy components into a sophisticated digital workflow supporting product development, quality assurance, manufacturing and lifecycle management. Advances in 3D scanning, portable metrology, computational modelling and additive manufacturing are enabling manufacturers to capture, analyse and recreate physical products with levels of speed and accuracy that were previously difficult to achieve.

Renishaw’s new Equator X exemplifies the shift to closed-loop manufacturing by combining the high throughput of comparative gauging with the flexibility and traceability traditionally associated with coordinate measuring machines.

For decades, manufacturing has followed a largely linear process. Products move from design and engineering to production, followed by inspection and quality control. Once components are measured, the results are typically used to determine whether parts pass or fail specification, with little influence on the original design unless significant problems emerge.