ronaldrc

Guys, pattern phd's please advice on where to print my pdf plans, kinkos don't.

epr3

Try Staples, or the other place may be a drafting supply

ronaldrc

thanks!

flywilly

My Feedback: (121)

Hi Ronaldrc,
I know Staples will do it, but I've been using my local Fed-EX/Kinkos for plans printing for more than 10 years and they've printed from pdfs on many occasions, plus they will scale them up or down. Do they have a large scale printer?
They are or were cheaper than Staples, too. You have to check more than one Kinkos.
Good Luck!

ronaldrc

hey flywilly, thanks! Ive been flying rtf's most of the time and the thought of building is....what if I print and send it to precision cut kits, do think they may ease up the whole process?

dhal22

Kinkos has printed 60 sized plans for me many times.

flywilly

My Feedback: (121)

Many or most Laser cutter outfits will cut from plans (assuming all the parts are shown - not always the case with kit plans). Precision Cut does very nice work. You might also consider Eureka as they produce a number of pattern kits.
What are you planning on building?

ronaldrc

The Cosmos 60. Ya, Precision have a good reputation, also would they make the canopy, deck and cowl?

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

Hi Ronald,

Drawing a CAD plan from the original to extract parts for laser cutting is a fairly labour intensive task. I'm quite familiar with the process as most everything I've built in the last 7 years has made use of this method one way or another. I currently build my models (and offer kits of them) from laser cut parts that are produced in the same way you have in mind. That said, although I strive to (and generally succeed) preserve all the moments, planforms and external dimensions of the model, I typically re-design the model from the ground up internally. In particular, if you are considering building one of the classics, they can always use some re-engineering internally to make the build frame up faster, better and lighter. The availability of laser or CNC cutting allows us to design many aspects that were previously done in a much more basic way. For example, the integration of power and radio components including linkages. All this can be designed in before hand allowing one to "just build" from computer cut parts.

I've attached a pair of pictures of the latest re-design project I've worked on (a P-51D Mustang with new aerobatic airfoils) to give you an idea of how the original and CAD plans differ in structure yet are the same externally. The original plan and model was designed and built in the 70's. 40 years later, you can see where one can take things and shed ounces if not pounds in the process. In addition, note that with machine cut parts, the entire design and build can be done with interlocking structure and jig assemblies.

That said, my point is that while you can just re-create the original parts (although typically the original plans are not straight or level so the resulting model is often the same unless one is careful when "pulling" parts and building - original blue prints may even contain dimensional errors which I've come across often), the effort of putting the model into a CAD program just calls for innovation and improvements. But..., as mentioned, the process requires time, work and some ingenuity as to where to take things with today's lighter modern building techniques. Personally, unless I was going to modernize the design, I would simply scratch build the model from the original plans cutting and adjusting parts by hand to suit. Precision cutting laser parts with an imperfect source plan leaves something to be desired in my opinion.

Just sharing my thoughts and experiences.

Cheers, David

P.S. Like Will asked - what do you want to build?

P.S.2 In most cities you will find what are called reprographics shops. These facilities are specialized in printing engineering and architectural drawings on large 36" or 48" wide laser plotters. The quality of the plan printouts you get from them is usually a notch above what Kinkos/FedEx and Staples can produce. If printing old blue prints though, the difference is usually not noticable but the repro shops are typically an order of magnitude cheaper. They can typically also print in "redline" colour (64 line colours) for not much more (useful with CAD plans) or in full colour if doing for example a covering/paint colour scheme.

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

Ron,

The Cosmos 60 - Beautiful model!

Typically laser cutting/design facilites don't also have the tooling/expertise to reproduce PET, ABS and fiberglass parts. In fact, absent the originals, having them reproduced would be rather expensive and labour intensive as plugs would have to be built, molds made and then parts pulled. However, there may be a way to have these parts made if you were willing to fund the cost of mold making (as well as your parts). It would require the assistance of some forum members willing to lend their parts for the tooling. The original parts are typically undamaged and reproduction parts often of better quality.

David

flywilly

My Feedback: (121)

Don Carlson at RCAIIR could do the glass parts and canopy. I have a Cosmos 60 kit. I may have traced all the parts for it which would help, but as David said (and I hoped he would jump in here) redesigning the classics to take advantage of laser cutting is really the way to go. Much better strength to weight and the ability to integrate component mounting into the build speeds up the building process.

ronaldrc

Thank you so much guys! Doxilla, can I buy all the cut parts and upgrades from you and later get the glass from Mr Carlson?

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

Well that was fast!

Will, thanks for offering your parts for reproduction. Yes, I was defintely thinking of Don when it came to this as we all know he gets the job done and he's made a few nice glass parts for me in the past. Thanks also for your support in my "vision" of the classics when it comes to re-productions.

I think another iron was just thrown into the fire...

David

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

Ron,

I thought you might ask so in between posts I also began to give the project some thought. The 60 size MK classics are a work of art kit wise and I was tested a couple of years ago in the re-design of one of the 120 size MK designs - the Super Chipmunk. That project was a complete success in my view although it hasn't come complete circle yet - models remain to be built and flown.

In looking at the plans, I can see already how I would mix things up internally. For one, a sheeted rear deck would be replaced for the heavy carving/sanding approach of the 30+ year old design but there are many areas where the model would be lightened and changed. A re-design like this takes a fair bit of effort like already mentioned so it wouldn't be ready for "kitting" for some time. Unlike the original MK kit, there would be no hardware, spinner, tank and so forth but that is not a limitation for builders. Of course, one of the main things that would change is that all metric dimensions (millimeters) would be transposed to imperial dimensions (inches) including all wood stock used for the kit.

Depending on your build schedule, I may undertake the project and yes, the complete kit would be an assembly of the pan and canopy produced by Don and a wood laser kit with CAD plans from myself. In order to finalize the design, I would likely need a reproduction pan and canopy as well as a good printed copy of the plans. If Will is able to, ideally also a copy of the traced parts for dimensional reference. While the airfoils would remain unchanged, many of the formers would be changed from the originals.

David

RC YEAGER

Excuse my ignorance but... How do they print out a plan from a pdf file and know exactly what size it must come out at? i.e. If I have a plane with 64 inch span and I want the plan to be the size the designer intended, in this case 64 wingspan, how does Kinko, Office Max or whomever ensure that the print out comes out the correct size?

ronaldrc

Hi! It usually defaults to the original size at which the paper was first scanned. Then you can use the percentage window to enlarge or reduce it. A few years ago I remember this guy who had enlarged a Curare to 160 size! I've been reading on fluid dynamics, wing theory aerodynamics etc, design and size modifications just don't work.

RC YEAGER

Okay... the key word here is "usually"... Mostly, in all these places, they don't let clients go back with the employee and do the process with them. So I guess one has to sort of rely on the employee knowing what he's doing. And then just to be sure, I guess one has to bring along a measuring tape and verify some known dimension of the plane/plan being printed. And if it came out wrong I guess one is screwed, cause they'll probably want you to pay for the one that came out wrong size even if they print another one adjusted to correct size.

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

This is a question that has been asked several times before and addressed in other threads (just FYI), but in a nutshell vector PDF files are "internally dimensioned". What this means is that even a blueprint scan to PDF will specify in its metadata what the dimension of the file is. So a technician reproducing a print from a PDF scan really doesn't have to know anything other than how NOT to press buttons in the printers driver. A reprographics shop by default should have all its drivers set to print documents at their native scale. Altering the size, and therefore, scale of a plan is as easy as feeding a percentage to a field in the printer dialogue box. One can say 50% and the plan will print at half the scale of the original. At 200%, it will be double in size - it's that simple. This of course doesn't mean the output is meaningful.

Note that this process of printing a vector PDF is different than say printing a high resolution raster file (e.g., JPG, TIF, TGA or PNG) who's "paper space" dimensions are arbitrary. This is also true of native CAD files in some programs (most actually) such as AutoCAD where the design space of the drawing is scale independent. Of course in a design the objects are usually internally dimensioned so that a person is not as big as a building (although that can easily be done with vector programs), for example, but this is relative scale, not absolute scale which is what the transfer of a CAD drawing to paper space typically accomplishes. It defines and locks scale of the drawing as a whole. Such paper space scale "locking" can be contained in a PDF file rather than directly to paper output. This makes PDF a very versatile and practical document container format. More than text, line art and graphics can be contained in a PDF - they can also include sound and video.

I might add that scaling a plan (up or down) is best accomplished on a computer in a program able to read the file format (in this case PDF). Programs such as Illustrator (PDF, AI, EPS, PS) and Photoshop handle these tasks routinely. Scaling a plan with a printer driver is fine but generally not particularly accurate. For example, if one wanted a spinner to be 2" where it is originally shown on the plan to be 63 mm, the driver scaling process will not be sufficiently accurate to accomplish the required scaling. Not because of unit conversion issues but because of the scaling precision of the driver process.

David

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

Yes,

this is is another good reason to not rely on the printer operator (e.g., at Kinkos) to handle an, albeit simple, scaling engineering task. The math should be done by someone who's familiar with the model and the process. A student at Kinkos cannot be expected to understand that a spinner printed at 2.15" is not the same as one printed at 2.25". For him or her they are just lines on paper. For us it's a custom anodized Tru Turn... If you know what I mean.

David

RC YEAGER

Thanks for the info David... I figured this is a topic that has been thoroughly addressed but I'm back in RC and RCU after long hiatus so it was easier to just put it out there again. BTW... IU think it was you who told me you had a Rex .09-20 for future project and asked me to post photos of my Tweedy Bird Project with same engine... just cut formers this last weekend. Gonna break-in engine soon. Will post stuff in a few weeks.

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

Ron,

Applying FD theory to our models must be done with a pinch of salt. Our models fly despite many laws of physics and FD that often say otherwise. Over the years, with adequate thought to modifications required in a scaling process, scaling plans up and down, in a planform sense alone, has been done by many kitters and works remarkably well. Consider for example the entire line of MK classic kit designs. Most models existed in 20, 40, 60 and sometimes 90 or 120 size with very little difference, planform or airfoil wise, between scales. I can take a 60 size MK plan and scale it to the dimensions of the 20 size and the comparison between the two planforms will be very similar.

David

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

Sure was! Looking forward to your build.

David

RC YEAGER

I concur... It would be a different animal altogether if one were to try to scale up/build a real small plane (say a Bonanza) into a 737 size plane... for real, not model... ridiculous example, but you get the idea

dhal22

Currently Don has my Cosmos canopy and belly pan for replication. I need to get it back.

doxilia

My Feedback: (3)

David,

that's good news. Any ETA for their reproduction and availability from Don yet?

David