Reverse Engineering Process
One of North America’s biggest power generation systems manufacturers wanted to design a new manufacturing process to produce steam turbine buckets. Since it was a tryout process and the old turbine buckets were made by a different process, reverse engineering of the turbine bucket was necessary to generate the math data for them. The first step is to 3D scan the turbine bucket. After the scanning was done, the data was then manually converted to a high-quality industrial-grade surface model. To use as a basis for CNC machining, it was then further converted into an IGES solid model.
After the Reverse Engineering of the Turbine Bucket
A well-known CNC machine manufacturer performed the machining in Germany. The turbines do not have any joints or welds. So, a whole block of steel needed to be machined. Since the solid model was already generated, it was easy to analyze and modify on the computer. This process proved to be a viable solution for manufacturing turbines on a mass scale, saving time and resources in the long run.
The manufactured turbines can have different inspection reports made such as:
- Leading and trailing edge measurements
- Cross sections
- Airfoil shape
- Complete 100% coverage of the entire part
