Cleaning up an image/increasing its resolution/detail level?
 

First of all - here is the image in question.

My brother wants to construct a 3D model of that thing in Solidworks, and this is the only pic he has to work with. As you can see, the detail level is not high enough to make out some of the connections/parts and that makes his job rather difficult. For the backside of the it, he plans to extrapolate the shape.

I'm wondering if there is a way to increase the resolution/detail level/contrast of that image. I know I sound noobish in the request, but I really have no idea how to approach this. Any help at all would be most appreciated. (Even if just to state I'm an idiot wanting to increase the resolution of a jpg ;_;)

I could try and filter out the jpeg artifacts, and add "noise/texture" and get something that will look better, but not a literal restoration.

Resolution can be increased, but will do you no good.

Higher Contrast would actually take detail out of the "dark" areas of the pic.

As far as I know, you can't increase the resolution or quality of a non-vector image, just as you can't increase the quality of a 128kbps MP3 to a 192kbps MP3. You can't make more from what you have, only less. One way to do what you're trying to do is to vector trace as much of the image as possible, then use filters to clean up the image. You then have a vector image to manipulate without fears of losing quality.

Correct. You can't add quality that wasn't there initially.