Printing Full Size Drawings

Lines that were drawn later in a section had errors as large as

How about using mylar? Interesting, could be the rollers not tracking right and not the paper itself.

When I had my size E, 8 pen CalComp, it will track right on (replot on same print using the sight glass pen) with error within one #000 pen width with paper, vellum or mylar anywhere within the 36" x 48" sheet.

Reply to
** Frank **
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and not the paper

This case was definitely with the paper. We (CalComp) did spend a lot of time with tracking issues (see next comment) but that was not the problem is this case. The problem was due to changes in the media. The paper had come off of a roll that had been stored in plastic wrapper, and it was acclimitizing to the room environment. One of my responsibilities was the software that was handling the alignment between sections. Thus I spent quite a bit of time making sure that the causes of the problems with this plot were known. This sort of problem did not occur with mylar which is dimensionally very stable.

print using the sight

anywhere within the

Yes. CalComp spent a lot of effort in making sure that the media tracked accurately. While I was with CalComp, we built test fixtures for testing every new design for the pinch rollers, drums, and the platens. Sizes, shapes, materials, textures, forces, and alignment were all critical for proper tracking.

Reply to
Dan Coby

Kinko's, Office Depot, some Staples are all places you can go but you will be paying almost twice as much as a blueprinter that architects, engineers & contractors go to. I am not saying to get blueprints since nobody in the construction industry uses them anymore, except maybe an old architect. You can also save your drawing in .pdf and .plt formats as well as .dxf and .dwg.

As for using a printer to "scale" your drawing, not a good idea. most all printers will not scale it accurately. Just try it and measure the output yourself. At least Autocad can scale 1:1, 1:2 or any other scale whether it is architectural or engineering. I am sure you know this but when we have to scale any engineering drawings we do it X12. But when the engineer gets them back they can't seem to figure out how to turn them back (1/12)

Pen Plotters: Ha!! If you do have access to one of these dinosaurs keep in mind it could take and hour or more to plot out your drawing, depending on how many layers you have versus the new plotters they have now, which any blueprinter should have which may take 2 minutes to plot.

As previously mentioned, check out the yellow pages, call the blueprinter, find out if you can email your drawing to them and it will be printed out before you arrive or you can put it on a disc in any of the formats mentioned above and wait maybe 5 minutes.

The only time I knew of someone going to Kinkos for a copy (8.5x11 or drawing size) is because it is late and the blueprinter has already closed for the night and they absolutely positively have to get their copies tonight.

Hope this helps.

Dave FL

Reply to
Dave

Mon, Oct 1, 2007, 4:39am (EDT-3) snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Dave) doth sayeth: As for using a printer to "scale" your drawing, not a good idea. most all printers will not scale it accurately.

That just struck my eye. I've got a lot of books on building things, steam engines, internal combustion engines, boats, etc., with plans in them. These are books from around 1900 to the present. One of the most recent acquisitions, Model Marine Steam, has plans for a two-cylinder, double-acting, oscillating steam engine, meant to run in a model boat. The plans take up a whole two pages. LOL Kinda funny how something you'd usually think of as quite complicated would only have a two page plan, and some wood projects take up a whole book to tell you how to make them. But, I digress. NONE of the plans in these books are to scale (how could they be?, the largest books are about 8" X 10 1/2") and the later books anyway, often clearly state on the plan pages, NOT TO SCALE.

JOAT "I'm an Igor, thur. We don't athk quethtionth." "Really? Why not?" "I don't know, thur. I didn't athk."

Reply to
J T

Thanks!

That is surely true ... but, for most old country boys there's usually more than one way to skin a particular cat. :)

So, just in case someone hasn't figured it out:

I've used a CAD program (AutoSketch and its predecessor), along with a series of cheap ink jet printers down through the years, to print, to scale, small parts (less than 14" or so) for use as templates, with accurate results.

As an example, below is a photo of the legal size printout (on a rather cheap HP 5510 printer) of the curved chair rail template that I used to make a batch of 7 identical chairs, with a ruler laying on top as "the judge".

formatting link
's a cheap digital camera, so if you zoom in, be careful that the distortion/parallax of the camera lens on the "0" ruler edge and "12.5" marks doesn't fool you ... take a look at the 6 1/4" mark on the ruler instead, to get a better idea of the accuracy)

Bingo! ... On one printer I no longer use, I had to use a scale of 1" : .995" in the CAD program, arrived at by trial and error, to get a "scale" drawing to print out accurately on legal size paper. (I should have mentioned that fact in the original post).

On the HP5510 I now use as a shop printer, a 1":1" scale has worked fine ... thus far.

IOW, if you're determined and have no other tools at hand, you can get excellent results ... AAMOF, I don't think I can cut to the approximately

1/128" error that showed on that particular ruler in the photo, in any event.

On my "project tape measure", you could not see/measure any error on the parts cut.

But you're right, you can't just take it for granted, you must measure to make sure it suits your purpose.

A caveat: I always use legal size paper when doing this, and if you change paper size I suspect you better double check/adjust the scale again.

I mention the above, because when the need arises to cut out identical small parts as accurately as possible, this is a good step/method to know, at least its worked for me.

Now, not only do we need to use the same tape measure throughout a project, we need to calibrate it, our CAD programs, AND our printers. :)

as always YMMV ...

Reply to
Swingman

the generic name for such shops, and the yellow pages directory heading, is "reprographics shops".

Note: the _easy_ way to get big output is to get a PostScript printer, output full-size postscript from the CAD, package and send that througha 'posterizer' routine that will tile as many 8-1/2 x 11 sheets as needed to make the full drawing.

Reply to
Robert Bonomi

On Oct 1, 6:33 pm, "Swingman" wrote: As an example, below is a photo of the legal size printout (on a rather

There you go trying to prove me wrong. When printing directly from the cad program it should come out to scale if you set it properly. If you take an 11x17 (or other size) and try to scale it down using just a copier is when we start screwing up the scale.

OK, I have tried but still am unable to calibrate my tape measure.

I totally agree that we need to use the same tape measure, no matter if it is a small job or taking as built dimensions of a building.

Dave

Reply to
Dave

Nope ... went to pains to NOT do that ... a shame you took it that way.

LOL, I would have sworn that was EXACTLY my point ... oh well, never mind, I'm sure someone will find the information useful at some point in their woodworking.

Reply to
Swingman

I didn't take it that way, Sorry if it came out like that.

I agree totally but, I am still trying to figure out how too calibrate my tape measure, LOL

Dave

Reply to
Dave

Use it as the "master" to calibrate _to_ ...

Reply to
Swingman

Use the calibration tab on the end. Once you get it right, smack it with a hammer so it stays in place.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

I had a class once that taught how to calibrate tape measurements. It took tension (geometry of the tape between two points - centenary function), temperature for various expansion rates for different tape materials, altitude, humidity and a few other things I've forgotten. This was before the electronic calculator and the slide rule was not accurate enough, so it took some time to come up with the correction factor. Now you could just point and shoot by laser instaneously within an accuracy of 1/8" over 300 yards!

In any case all our drawings were to scale from the plotter so you could scale it as the contractors, engineers and architects often do, but not recommended.

Reply to
** Frank **

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