As I said at the beginning of the series of posts on D.I.Y. Reverse Engineering, this part of my research is looking at how feasible it is for a consumer, using currently available technology and software, to design and manufacture their own products. Reverse engineering an existing product is necessary to provide the foundation for this design and manufacture to happen, but what’s more important is looking at the opportunities and obstacles consumers currently face. And so the next few posts will talk about the issues involved in designing and manufacturing a custom-designed mouse, using Google’s free SketchUp modelling software.

The ways in which the design and digital manufacture of products by consumers could revolutionise traditional manufacturing has been widely predicted, Marshall Burns and James Howison for example, predicted the “Napsterization of manufacturing”¹ in 2001, and Evan Malone and Hod Lipson (developers of the Fab@Home system) have described additive manufacturing as having “the potential to transform human civilization.”² However, whilst the hardware and services which might enable consumer fabbing have been in development for some time, the processes by which consumers might conceive and design ‘fabbable’ products have tended to be assumed or glossed over. Neil Gershenfeld for example, writing in Fab about how a novice might use modelling clay to prototype a design, describes a process in which the clay shapes would be 3D scanned and imported to a CAD software environment:

“they can then be manipulated like any other object: scaled larger and smaller, bent around a surface, or merged with other components by Boolean operations. The resulting model can then be output on a fabrication tool such as a 3D printer or an NC mill, effectively converting the clay into plastic or steel, with enhancements added through the CAD editing.” (pp.130-131)

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The third post in this series looks at what is an inevitable feature of any product development process – the checking, correction and modification that occurs when the first prototypes are available. Even though I had reverse engineered an existing (i.e. previously ‘proven’) product this was still a stage I was expecting to have to go through; the inaccuracies in measuring together with the new tolerances introduced by the selective laser sintering (SLS) process meant it was highly unlikely that everything would fit first time. Even so, it was still a surprise to see how much my model differed from the original product.

Having created the Solidworks CAD model as described in the previous post, an .stl file was exported for each part so that SLS prototypes could be made. In common with most CAD software Solidworks allows you to tune the accuracy of the .stl file by adjusting the linear and angular tolerances. Playing around with these options resulted in some large variations in file size:

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This post deals with some of the practicalities of DIY reverse engineering. I’ll go through the way the mouse was measured and modelled, talk about some of the tricks and pitfalls, and the things I’d do differently next time. As I mentioned in the previous post, the scenario I’m working to is that of someone reasonably skilled at CAD modelling but without access to expensive 3D scanning equipment. That person models the mouse and makes the files available for download by others. To simulate this I’ve only used commonly available tools for measuring. To make the CAD model I’ve used Solidworks, which I admit isn’t the most readily available bit of CAD software, but my argument would be that anyone committed enough to reverse engineer a product in this way will be able to get their hands on a copy, one way or another. My own copy is legit, just in case you were wondering.

Measuring the Mouse

Tools for disassembling and measuring

In no particular order, the tools I used for disassembling and measuring the mouse were as follows:

Ruler: actually not used that much, because it’s not accurate enough. But okay for checking measurements quickly.
Vernier Calipers: the most used item. These are analogue so not quite as easy to use as digital, but they’re cheaper, and just as accurate once you know how to use them.
Torx Screwdrivers: in truth these weren’t needed for the mouse, which has been assembled using pozidrive screws. That was a bit of a surprise, and I’d expect that anyone reverse engineering consumer electronics products would find themselves needing these pretty quickly.
Scalpel: for cutting through and removing adhesive labels
Mini Screwdriver set: for unscrewing small screws, as if you couldn’t guess
Anti-Static bag: once I’d removed the pcb I kept it in here. To be honest I’m not sure how necessary this is – I’ve never destroyed a pcb just by handling it. But it’s a cheap enough precaution if you want the product to work when you rebuild it.
Earthing strap (not shown in the picture): again a cheap precaution, wear it around the wrist and attach to a radiator pipe.

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The next few posts deal with a project which is making up a significant part of my PhD research, which is to reverse engineer a product, in this case a Microsoft branded mouse, and then to design and fit custom parts to it. I’ll start by explaining why I’m doing it, then go through the process of reverse engineering a product using only some basic tools, and finally talk about the redesigned products. At least one of the posts will talk about some of the software I’ve been using, and I might touch on a fairly academic subject which is the problem of incorporating design projects into a PhD, something I’ve had to pay a lot of attention to in the last few months.

Before I start, I should draw attention to Brian Ling’s Un-p3 project over at Design Sojourn. I actually included this project as part of my PhD application to explain the kind of thing I was interested in researching – the act of appropriating and redesigning existing products. Even though his reasons were somewhat different to mine, the Un-p3 project has continued to be an inspiration (and a help – when people ask what I’m doing I can point them there!).

Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 1000

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I recently received a mail from Alex Mamalyha, web community manager for i.materialise, announcing the launch of a new service from Materialise NV. i.materialise is a rapid manufacturing service aimed at designers, and the beta site gives a good idea of the way the service will work. Obviously there are many web-based rapid manufacturing services these days, and the announcement of a new one is a fairly regular occurrence which I usually just ignore. But given the extent to which Materialise have supported and encouraged designers’ use of RM technologies through their .MGX initiative, I thought this was one service that deserved further investigation.

The ‘manifesto’ of i.materialise claims the service makes “3D printing as easy as printing on paper”. Obviously such claims owe more to hyperbole than fact, but the i.materialise interface is presented in a relatively simple and obvious way. A workspace in the centre of the screen visualises the model once it is uploaded, and a number of drop-down menus to the right give the choice of materials, surface finishes etc.

To test the service, I used a model I made previously for Nina Pirhonen, a Finnish designer and creator of the PomPom character and series of books. The model was originally created in Solidworks, but in order to upload it to the i.materialise site it first needed to be converted to .stl format.

3D model of PomPom © Nina Pirhonen

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