Reverse Engineering Advice

While reverse engineering may be common practice in your company, and indeed elsewhere, I believe that it is unethical. The fact that your company has "been doing reverse engineering for ages now" doesn't make it any more acceptable.

There was a time in my life when I spent hours, if not days, sweating over a design for a particular device. To think that someone like you would steal my work and sell it as their own leaves me cold.

That's why I could never be a lawyer.

Do not expect help from the majority of us here. Reverse engineering is theft, and it is the work of those of us who do original design and development that you are stealing.

I think that we need to get something straight here. Reverse engineering simply from the product as sold is not theft in a legal sense unless it involves additional theft of intellectual property or patent infringement. If your moral framework tells you otherwise that is your priviledge.

That said I would not knowingly do anything to help someone outside our country to reverse engineer something designed and/or manufactured here without there being a legitimate contractual or ownership relationship in place. That's just part of my personal value system. Beyond that the company culture that exists where profits are derived from copying another's products does not offer promise of a good working or personal growth environment.

I have to laugh at people who try to reverse engineer products and then try to manufacture them in a place where the materials technologies are lacking. This is not the case with every product; but still there are many sad case studies.

The other thing I would say is that the company that seriously fears reverse engineering is in that position because of their inability for whatever reason to develop new and better products at a rate that defeats the time constant of the reverse engineering process. Again a negative for the potential job seeker or, for that matter supplier or customer.

Ed Weldon

In discussions like this, I'm always reminded of the little startup gang of crooks company that reverse engineered one of my designs for a railroad transformer. I, and the engineers for our legitimate competitors, all used an artificial current density rating, relying on the rails to act as a huge transient heat sink for momentary surges. Everybody knew about this, everybody built that way, everybody tested that way. And, it worked just fine . . . till these idiots reverse engineered one and tried to do an acceptance test WITHOUT RAILS. Durn thing caught fire.

Let me make a fair offer to you, talaus. If you carefully explain to us the drawbacks and inaccuracies of your engineering like craft to us so that we can more successfully design things you cannot copy, we will help you understand our engineering ethics and design goals. Now this will mean that you will be voluntarily preventing yourself from making a living in the company you presently work. You will be now doing exactly what you asking us to do.

I do understand that your company was likely formed when the Indian government required everything to be built within your borders and there was no international patent recognition, but those days have supposedly changed. Don't expect people to hand you their livelihood for free.

My last exposure to reverse engineering turned out to be a good laugh. I was laid off and hired by a competitor. They were trying to market a competitive product, but developed an impossible specification. Then the manager was trying so hard to save money and avoid taking any blame himself that I got criticized every time something didn't work right. (A .030 runout on a shaft produced by a CNC lathe was my fault. Right.)

I finally quit. My replacement was given a simpler set of specs, and he couldn't do it either. He was let go. They are now selling a machine that they claim is completely interchangeable with the original.

".. does the designer's skill play a major role in number/magnitude of errors? ..." Yes, to all those questions.

Talaus,

By now you would have realized that most people interpret Reverse Engineering to mean Stealing. This may not be your exact interpretation of the phrase, because otherwise, why would you open yourself up to such abuse.

Are you reverse engineering your own companies products, or other companies products?

Chris.

Sorry but reverse enginnernig is just copy. Please try to stop this and create your own engineering database. You can't expect anymore from us. You can use Tomlinson profile tester.

Dear Friends,

I did not expect so many replies, seemingly I have struck on the chord of pride of a design engineer.

For everyone who was ever hurt by "reverse engineering", I am sorry coz I do know how it feels when people steal ideas (like some guys who used to do it in college). Some might point out that I do not have the right to be sympathetic, but I choose to disagree. Or maybe I should really get my definition of reverse engineering right. Or maybe I am too young.

Once you know something is wrong, you can come up many ways to criticise it. I too can write stories on how thievery is immoral and how how thieves became fools. But, for all those in ideological rage, I accept your opinion.

So anyways, getting down to practical stuff, a customer gave us some product and he wants us to do it. The product itself is Chinese and was not reliable. And it was not so difficult to identify the CTQ's. I work specifically on new designs and so was unaware if other practices were there to ensure accuracy.

During our earlier days, we made what some OEMs asked us to. Basically sometimes reverse engineering their own products. Something like replacing foreign with local suppliers. I do agree that some of it may be wrong. And now, we do have some ghost of the past still hanging on us. Our new management has identified this almost a decade ago and most of our designs since are self engineered. Its not that you choose to copy but sometimes practical issues have forced us to and frankly, we do not like it. One public sector company wouldn't want a product because we made it smaller and better and they would not like to revise their age old acceptance standards. And in a market dominated by customers, we still have a foot stuck in reverse engineering. In fact, we even know that some ppl copy our products.

I know what people have in mind of what we do, get cartloads of other products and start copying them blindly. Its not what we do. In fact we really work really hard on our engineering in a place self-sufficient in all aspects and it has been a creative experience for me till now.

And I understand asking for tools for reverse engineering would seem like asking for tools for stealing. You would have to depend on people's morality on how they use it, a risky prospect. I really did not consider this when I asked, I just shot off the question as soon as I got the doubt.

I chose to explain because I am at the start of my career and hope to maintain a good rapport with Cr4. It helped immensely during my college days. I know the ground situation and so, keeping a true designer's ideals in mind, I will probably chalk out my own way.

Thanks!

Natural there is all the all legal & lawyer stuff, ethic issues and such!!

But for me it is clear: There are excellent nice tools out there. Forinstance the nice american build National instruments "Smart camera NI17xx" series and the related NI LabVision software.

Take the course and 1000 of possible creative, innovative applications will "crash" into your mind for the future of your non reverse engineering life.

Form one who just finished the course.

The Chinese product you were trying to copy was probably itself a bad copy of a Western product, so that may explain why you cannot get a good copy from a poor copy to work for you.

Why would anyone expect to be able to copy something Chinese, which are already well known for poor quality, and end up with something of good quality?

i am impressed by your equanimity (and good English too!). i appreciate your viewpoint, since a couple of years ago, i was asked to help do this copying, with enough engineering inputs to make it better than the original. Since the product was from a top European company, i said there is no way you guys can even understand the product, let alone replicate it AND make it better. Since i am retired and can choose what i want to do, i can afford to say no. You are not yet in a position to do so, i understand. However, i hope you will get into a better job where you can use your creativity and learning to design better products on your own. i do not want to name the companies involved, but an Eastern company has not only copied that same European product, they have even patented their own design in USA ! What a travesty of justice !

Good luck

Good answer talaus; especially from an OP that received more negative criticism than expected. Your views are a credit to you and your coworkers.

This reverse engineering is indeed a complex subject especially when we dwell on the ethics of a given situation and then try to extrapolate to other situations.

Perhaps better we look at the positive side since that was the prupose of the OP.

http://www.flexbar.com/facsimile.htm

describes a molding compound called "Facsimile" that cures with no shrinkage and is used specifically for inspection of complex contours. The Flexbar website gives only a vague reference to sales outside the USA ( "Throughout the U.S. and abroad, our network of trained industrial distributors .....") so its availability in your country may be questionable. As molding compounds go the price is high; but for small parts like electrical connectors the rate of usage would be low.

However the careful use of a molding compound to replicate internal features is not a particulaly novel idea; so you may be able to find a suitable zero shrinkage locally available product. There are certainly some cases where simple things like modeling clay will work. I often use this stuff for just such purposes in my own home workshop.

Another useful and simple tool for measuring small internal dimensions can be created using a drawing compass with an screw adjustment. Custom shaped tips can be fashioned out of metal or even hardwoods such as bamboo skewers. A bent paper clip soldered or glued to a small piece of brass or copper tubing of a diameter that fits the lead/point holder of the compass is suggested. This is easy desktop work that does not require the services of a machine shop.

Ed Weldon

I suggest you reverse engineer and construct a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) and a integrate it into a reverse engineered drafting system. After you get the package working, let us know and we will guide you through the next steps.

As you can see your original comment, and your later one, coupled with the way others see RE should give you an inkling of how people think.

You are not copying the Chinese version, why would you? You are trying to do a fault analysis on it so you can make a better one locally.

There is nothing wrong with taking a piece of equipment and analyzing it as to efficiency of operation, power, faults, etc., and even buying the products of several other competitors in the same market to do the same. You will end up with a number of solutions to the same problem by others. You then assess them as to cost, reliabilitye etc, and you then determine the flaws of each and try to design one that satisfies your client.

He says he does not like to buy a product where 25% of them, say, starts fires(the original Chinese one), you need to find the flaw in the Chinese one that starts fires, yours will not have that flaw. Often cost is the arbiter, the fire starting ones are cheaper dues to design shortcuts.

The problem you face is the Chinese maker will also do this one as he loses the market to your better design.

What makes you think Reverse Engineering is easy or easier than development on your own. When you copy something you also copy the mistakes.

Not to mention intgrity of the issue.

Reverse engineering is a common practice everywhere in the manufacturing world. Some of it is just plain copying which is unethical and may be illegal. Some of it is used as a means to improve an existing product. Taking different toasters apart and looking for areas that need improvement and then making a new design that eliminates those faults is an example. This to me is borderline RE, but then again, we are told to not try to reinvent the wheel. Where patents have expired on items, RE is used legally for the sole purpose of making money. An engineer working for such a company may find that RE is the easy part of the job. The hard part is finding out how to make it cheaper than the competition.

An engineer working for such a company may find that RE is the easy part of the job.

On large volume consumer items, I would I agree, but for a OEM in a niche market such as process equipment, low sales volume, High mark-up. It is very difficult to say that would be easy.

p911

Very interesting posts. I myself don't really fear reverse-engineering attempts.

The devil's in the details.

Much of that is invisible to someone who attempts to simply 'copy' another's product. Chances are, that if an enterprise is capable enough to recognize and analyze all the details (some of which are invisible) then they would have been able to simply design it and manufacture it themselves.

I'm sure we've all seen instances of good looking products that just don't cut the mustard when the rubber hits the road. Like tires from certain regions of the world.

What gets my goat is when someone counterfeits another's product to include trademarks and part numbers. That truly is a dangerous situation.

I have no problem with buying one of my competitors products, disassembling it and looking for its weak points. I can then figure out how to make my product better and/or cheaper. In one case, one competitor adds a component which makes his product more mathematically correct... but the end user would not see any difference between his product and mine, so I leave that component out. On another of his products, his antenna needs tuned to whatever frequency he is using. My product is built to operate over 4 MHz of bandwidth without tuning.

Kind of a case of "know thy enemy".

Bill

i checked with some friends who are into this. They use sometimes 3D scanning, used to be expensive, now not so much.

Check out this link ... whitelightscanning

Reverse Engineering is more expensive than engineering from scratch, for reasons noted by many posters above (and your own comments). As "ubethical" as the process may seem to us, there are cases when it is the only solution to the problem at hand, such as when the original manufacturer no longer supports a product that needs to be renovated. Even in this case, consideration should be given to the possibility that engineering a new product from scratch may be less costly than trying to reverse engineer ancient equipment (except, of course, in the case of trying to reverse engineer bows for archery, where the ancient products are so obviously better than the modern versions...)

Great stuff Charles

Your last sentence really summed it all up.

(except, of course, in the case of trying to reverse engineer bows for archery, where the ancient products are so obviously better than the modern versions...)

Del will reckon his bows are, if not better, than the real thing. We are talking only mechanical engineering here and that field leaves not much to improve. I still haven't built my black bamboo cross bow yet but you never know.

I had a go at a toaster one day and took a different approach. It worked. So what? The others work as well. Mine works better! Who cares? The others are still working just fine. And on and on.

That is when things get frustrating, when you go ahead and do all the things that have to be done and come up with a better toaster (did I just hear that mouse trap snap?) and get it to the market and then some one comes up with a "version" and becomes a competitor. No basic research done, just a bit of fiddling around with the new concept. And then the larger backer who does not take no for an answer.

It is a ruthless world out there, Ky.

Thank you for the technical(I will try them, Ed Weldon and kvsridhar) and ideological input.

As I said, we do work hard on our engineering. But yes, once we have a project at hand we make sure to check out the competitors. We do not actually find too many faults, coz they usually are European pioneers with high manufacturing capabilities. But frankly, they sometimes go overboard, especially some German designs (a marketing reason probably). We generally devise simpler mechanisms that suit the requirement and kind of incorporate these additional features to our own designs. As my boss says, 'Combiflam' (a combination of popular drugs which gives a 1+1=3 effect).

This is not always the case. Complicated profiles are sometimes incorporated to make the connector smaller and the big guys obviously won't bother to make more products with simpler mechanisms for the same application. Some customers need it, some don't. Anyway, which features are necessary and which not is a very subjective issue.

If you see that he provided a slot for testing of electrical continuity, if it really helps, we would also do it in our products. Not doing it because he did it first and we are not supposed so it seems foolish to me. During designing itself, you know some features will be copied, if they really add value. Some products are designed for the same application, adding ideas in other products, but we market it with a different USP.

Yes, reverse engineering is sometimes costlier that original development but the customer does not give us the required cushion of time. And I am not in a position to reject the requests. But when the ball is in our court, we do it the right way.

Just a word of caution .. if you are thinking of a well-known German screwless connector, my advice is ... DON'T ! Many good engineers have burnt their fingers trying it. i met some persons from that company, it is a high-precision product.

If that is not the one, and if you are not infringing any patents, good luck.

I get what you mean and no, I am not fiddling with it. My colleagues have enough experience to let me know what to touch and what no to.

But this world is relatively small and to my surprise, twice I have found patents on designs similar to what I had designed independently (one of them was on my table next day I designed it! It was an old foreign product & supposedly my boss wanted me to have a look at the creativity). It was a non-issue though, as they were only a part of extra-curricular thought.