Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering in prevalent in many industries, most often used to prevent competitors from gaining too great of an advantage in the market.  The nuclear industry uses reverse engineering as a survival mechanism.  The nuclear industry uses reverse engineering as a means to obtain replacement parts that are obsolete, or cannot be obtained for a reasonable cost or within a reasonable amount of time.

Reverse engineering generally follows one of two paths and NLI excels at both.  The goal of reverse engineering mechanical parts is typically to create exact copies that can be installed in assemblies.  A common example is pump parts for an obsolete pump.  A pump contains easily replaceable parts such as gaskets and bearings, items such as casings that can last the life of the plant, and items like impellers that wear or are damaged by normal operation.  A reverse engineered impeller may cost several times the cost of the original, but now unavailable, impeller.  But that is cheap compared with the alternative of having to replace the entire pump.

Reverse engineering electrical or electronic equipment often requires re-engineering of the equipment before it can be manufactured and supplied.  This is because many of the individual components that make up the piece of equipment are also no longer available.  The goal of reverse engineering electrical and electronic equipment is typically to create a replacement that looks and functions the same as the original, fits with the same space, and interfaces with the plant in the same manner.

It is impossible to be 100 percent certain that a reverse engineered item is identical to the original, unless you possess the original drawings (if you possess the original drawings you don’t need to perform reverse engineering).  Using a reverse engineered equipment or part nearly always requires an engineering evaluation be performed.  NLI saves plant engineering resources time by performing and providing these engineering evaluations.