Our reverse engineering service turns a physical part with no drawings into a clean, editable CAD model you can print, modify or re-order. Post the part or a clear photo and an engineer reviews it and quotes within 2 hours. Not every job needs a scanner: simple parts are often reverse engineered from measurements alone.
Built for a part with no drawings: obsolete, discontinued, or simply undocumented. Some people call this scan to CAD, others call it part to CAD; both describe the same thing, turning the physical object into a file you can use. We capture the geometry, by scanning, by manual measurement, or both, and rebuild it as parametric CAD you can print or re-order. Just need the shape captured rather than rebuilt? See our 3D scanning service. Nothing to copy yet? That is our CAD design services.
The enquiry: a right-hand trim piece for a Citroen Berlingo, with no drawings to work from and the vehicle off the road waiting for it. The client had the intact left-hand original to copy from. Our assessment: at 59cm the part is too long for a single print, so it would need modelling in sections and bonding after printing. Scanning would have produced a messier mesh than it saved at this size and surface finish, so the recommended route was a hand-built mirror copy from photos and measurements against the real left-hand part, no scan involved.
The end piece had cracked. We reverse engineered it and worked through several CAD variations, mirroring the geometry to match the original and adjusting each side in turn. Fit-testing each variation against the physical part is the next step once the prints are back.
A batch of 100 custom wing nuts, replicating an existing OEM part. Copying the original's thin wings exactly would snap them under hand-tightening torque, so the design phase reverse engineers the profile from the client's photos and stated thread size, with the wings deliberately thickened in CAD to survive printing.
One folding-mechanism cog needed replacing, but an identical cog was still fitted on the pram's other hinge. Rather than guess at the damaged one, we quoted to reverse engineer it from the intact twin once posted to us: £175 for design and two printed units, one spare included.
A reverse engineering service starts with the same problem every time: a part exists, but the drawings do not. The original maker is gone, the CAD was never kept, or the only record left is the worn component in your hand. We capture the object's real geometry, by 3D scanning, by hand measurement, or a mix of both, and rebuild it as a clean, editable CAD model an engineer can actually work with, not just a copy.
The deciding question is simple: are you copying or fitting to something that already exists, or inventing something new? If it is the former, you are reverse engineering.
Not every job that involves an old part needs the same route, and the kit is only half the decision. For complex or organic shapes we scan on a Shining 3D EinScan Rigil (resolution up to 0.05mm on Shining 3D's published figures), markerless on most parts. For flat faces, straight edges and a handful of key dimensions, calipers and a clear photo are often faster than a full scan, and skip the mesh-cleanup step entirely. Some jobs use neither in isolation: even on a scanned part, bolt patterns, mating faces and mounting points are measured by hand, because that is what decides whether a reproduction fits.
| Your situation | Best route | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Complex organic shape, must match exactly (trim, housing, contour) | 3D scan + reverse engineer | Freeform geometry can't be captured accurately by hand measurement: scanning is the only faithful route. |
| Flat faces, straight edges, a handful of key dimensions | Reverse engineer from measurements | A bracket or plate built from planes and holes redraws faster by hand than it scans. |
| Part fits existing hardware you can't change | Reverse engineer the interface | The mating features must be captured from the real assembly so the new part fits first time. |
| Working from a brief or a sketch, no object to hand | CAD design from scratch | There's no original to recover the geometry from: a design brief, not a reverse-engineering job. |
The Citroen Berlingo mirror trim shown further up this page sits in row two: the recommended route was measuring and redrawing by hand, no scan at all, because scanning genuinely was not the faster or better fit for that shape. For a scanned part, deviation checking against the raw scan is what keeps the rebuilt model faithful before anything is printed; we don't issue a certificate of conformance as standard, but every critical dimension is confirmed with you first.
This is the awning end piece pictured further up this page: the chip in it is exactly the kind of gap our rebuild has to close, and why we show you the reconstruction before it goes anywhere near a printer.
No longer made and no aftermarket supply. You have the broken or worn original: we recover the geometry and reproduce it, exactly what this service is built for.
Industrial machinery, plant and equipment running on parts whose CAD was never kept, or never existed. We rebuild a model so the part can be reordered on demand instead of hunted down.
A new part has to mate with hardware you cannot change: a bolt pattern, a housing, a mounting face. We capture those interfaces directly from the real assembly so the replacement fits first time.
Classic-car trim, knobs, brackets and interior fittings long out of production. Send the one surviving original; we reverse engineer it and reproduce the set, original returned tracked.
Recovering a part you can't buy any more shouldn't be complicated. Four steps:
Send a photo through the quote form along with what the part actually needs to achieve: what it bolts to, what it has to survive, and whether an intact mirror-image original exists. That decides the route before anything is measured.
Scan, hand measurement, or both, depending on the part. The original goes back to you tracked.
An engineer turns the captured data into a clean, editable model, reconstructing any worn or missing geometry and confirming critical dimensions with you.
We print the replacement in FDM or SLA, matched to the job, or deliver the STEP model so you can re-order and modify it yourself. Your call.
An engineer reads every enquiry first, and will say plainly if your part is a CNC or metrology job instead, usually within 2 working days. The work itself, scanning, measuring, modelling and printing, happens under one roof in Poole: a short drive if you are near Bournemouth or the rest of Dorset, a tracked parcel if you are anywhere else in the UK.
A reverse-engineered model earns its keep beyond the first replacement. Once it exists as a proven, dimensioned file, the same tooling-free route into small-batch production is open for 10, 100 or 1,000+ units, because the design has already been checked against a real object rather than a drawing on paper.
The model is yours to keep, not ours. Nobody else has to lose the drawings on this part twice: hold the STEP file and re-order it whenever you need to, change it as the application changes, or park it in your own archive against the day the physical original finally gives out.
And if the part you're recovering needs more than reproducing, a redesign, a material upgrade, a fix for the flaw that broke the original, that crosses into product development. We'll tell you when you're there.
Send a photo or post us the original, and an engineer will review it and quote within 2 hours. Your part comes back tracked. There is a £50 minimum order, and we will take on a single part.
