When a small plastic component fails inside an older industrial machine, the repair can quickly become more complicated than the part itself. With replacement parts unavailable for a legacy machine, it can sit idle while operators search for a solution.
That was the problem facing a machining operation in Brazil, where a four-blade propeller used in a CNC machine’s cooling unit had reached the end of its service life. The part, responsible for helping cool the machine’s oil exchanger, had already been repaired several times with silicone rubber. By the time it reached RVF3D, a Brazilian engineering and 3D design studio based in Rio de Janeiro, for repair, the propeller was visibly damaged, uneven, and no longer a suitable candidate for another patch.
Instead of trying to repair the old component again, RVF3D set out to recreate it instead not by using traditional CAD software, but with a solution designed specifically for reverse engineering parts.