Reverse Engineering.

You will not get any help here. Reverse engineering is theft of other people's designs.

Yes, and no. If it is capitalizing on a good idea for personal or corporate benefit, it is theft. If it is getting what you want and need (and what is fair) when the OEM is taking the piss with rediculous spares/parts prices , it is fair game.

I wonder if you realise just how illogical that statement is. Where do you draw the line?

Though this article focuses on South Africa it may clarify where the line is drawn.

I believe many countries have accepted that reverse engineering of spare parts does not infringe copyright (unless you have pinched the OEM's drawings).

1. Absolutely ANY application.

2. Find a good product, with high demand,

3. Make sure you KNOW how to do it well.

4. Copy it.

5. Don't be fooled into thinking that any nation or industry has the monopoly - expediency rules, but beware of patents and litigation.

6. Consider carefully why reverse-engineering is required or desired in the first place , if the reasons are valid, good luck. If you have something better to offer in terms of performance or sevice, well done. If you are only after a fast buck, shame on you!

Very simple. You have a product in your hand and you are trying to discover how it works, why it works, and how it is built. This can be done for good reasons or for very bad reasons. The bad reason is that you are trying to steel someone's intellectual property.

The good reasons are that you want to discover why a product failed or is lacking, so that you can make improvements or corrections to the design. Or, perhaps, applying the technology in a new way.

A good example of "good reverse engineering" is a challenge that I am facing. I have spent a good part of my career developing methods of assembling a product. Now I am faced with the challenge of taking this product apart and salvaging what might be of value in a way that is not destructive to the environment.

Plenty of good information below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering

As others have said, but one aspect of reverse engineering that people may have forgotten about is legal product reverse engineering.

One example of this is a product manufacturer whose product needs to be reverse engineered to find out how it works because they have no (or have lost) key design information of said product. This is rather commonplace (unfortunately) when companies buy other companies designs, products, patents, etc.

I have been asked to reverse engineer a number of products and prototype designs because either the client (or us) have brought a prototype design and need to know how to redesign and/or mass produce it, or have simply lost all the documentation and cannot remember how to build the product <cringe>.

Additionally my previous job was testing electrical products to various standards at a testing laboratory where extensive product analysis and reverse engineering was involved to ensure every aspect of product safety and compliance to various standards.

Hope this helps, reverse engineering is actually a surprisingly large subject.

Jack - Now that I think about it, a Reverse Engineer.

As others here have pointed out, reverse engineering should not be done alone. This is theft of intellectual property in the purest sense.

But reverse engineering as part of a number of engineering pursuits is not just acceptable practice, it can be a mandatory practice. When parts of a system get obsoleted, often the engineering notes on all of the nuances of the part selection have been lost or never recorded in the first place. So appropriate replacement parts can only be found by reverse engineering. Heck, the entire field of archeology and most forensics relies on reverse engineering.

Occasionally reverse engineering can actually save intellectual property rights. If a product fills a valuable role but fails far to often, a reverse engineering approach starting from the failure mode itself can enlighten how to improve the original patent.

Reverse engineering is just another tool in our arsenal of tools. Like all tools it can be used legally and illegally.

get something someone else made and build it better.

A Reality of life man.