Product Design, Reverse Engineering, Rapid Prototyping - a Case Study in Cutlery Production

Abstract

Reverse Engineering and Rapid Prototyping are consolidated practices in the industrial product design process. In any case, best practices should be set up according to the type of product and of objectives. This paper presents the results of a product re-engineering application in the field of high quality stainless steel cutlery. This activity included a re-modeling of a basis-shape that reproduces at best the original shape of a cutlery set designed in the Thirties for Alessi, which is still considered to be very fashionable. The shape of the manufactured physical pieces of cutlery has changed in time in respect to the original design, mainly because of some problems related to their manufacturing, which has been transferred from the central plant to other branches. We have obtained the digital model of the pieces of cutlery on the basis of the analysis of the available original 2D drawings, and of the laser scanning and subsequent re-engineering design of the available manufactured objects. Particularly complex activity was the removal of the shapes deviations due to the different forming techniques used in the various production factories. At the end of the reconstruction activity, physical prototypes of the new models were produced by means of a sintering process in order to evaluate and compare them to the original ones.