Reverse Engineering

You may have seen the movie "Paycheck" starring Ben Affleck. The main character's job was a reverse engineer. He took competitor's products apart and then made something newer and better. The movie took creative licence but it did show the world the process of reverse engineering.

Reverse Engineering's dictionary definition is:

Reverse Engineering is the process by which a human-made object is deconstructed to reveal its designs, architecture, or to extract knowledge from the object

To put this in layman's terms you pull something apart to see how it works. I have been doing this since I was very young. My biggest challenges were Transformers but that was due to not wanting to break the glue. The deconstruction was in my head.

Reverse Engineering seems like a complicated thing to do but it's easier than you think. Take Optimus Prime for example:

Optimus Prime is a robot that transforms into a truck. This version is the Generation 1 Optimus Prime not the movie version. While Optimus Prime might be the leader of the Autobots his transformation is simple. So to reverse engineer Optimus you first have to understand how he transforms. You follow the instructions and there you have it. Now let's break down the transformation from truck mode to robot mode.

1. Chassis folds down to become legs
2. Tips of chassis fold down to become feet
3. Fold bottom sides out a little to reveal arms
4. Fold backs out to become shoulders
5. Rotate roof 180º to reveal head
6. Insert hands into holes that form the headlights

Once you understand how the whole works you can then start to understand how the parts work. Take the chassis. There is a pin that runs the width of the chassis that joins the legs to the body. This pin allows the chassis to rotate to become the legs. The same for the feet, shoulders, and head.

The arms are on pins with tips that go into the shoulder pieces. This allows the arms to swing out but lock the arms into a horizontal position.

The fists slot into holes with no mechanisms holding them in.

Optimus, while he seems complex, has in fact pretty simple construction. Now how would we make him better?

First, the hands could be part of the arm unit with a little slider mechanism on the side of the arm. This would allow the fists to slide into the arm with the lights being part of some sort of plate system. This would mean that when the fist is inside the arm the lights show in truck mode. When in robot mode the fists are out and the lights would be like a finger protector for battle.

Second, the method of attaching the arm to the shoulder structure would be a ball joint. This would allow more movement in the arms rather than the side to side movement.
The rest is pretty good construction and doesn't actually need changing.

Reverse Engineering is a great skill to have as a woodworker. It allows you to understand how components fit together to become a whole. This is exactly how woodworking works as well. You take a bunch of parts that you've cut and, using various joints, put them together. Once you break down plans to their individual components it makes woodworking easier. As you progress in your hobby you'll find you'll start to be able to reverse engineer all sorts of things. From there you'll be able to become skilled enough to pull apart and put things back together in your head. Soon the invisible things start to get imaged in your head as well. This allows you to piece things together without having to pull things apart at all.

And that, people, is how to reverse engineer something. It's not as complex as you'd think but the potential to expand your knowledge is worth it. With this skill developed there is nothing you can't build.