Don't know if anyone's had a smiliar experience . . .

I went to Kinko's today to copy some of my Top Flite plans, so that I could save the originals. The employee at Kinko's unfolded my plans, found the copyright symbol, and turned me away.

Thanksfully, there's more than one Kinko's in my area . . . and the second shop didn't care.

. . . Anyone else ever been turned away?

akpilot,
I've been to Kinko's a bunch of times to make copies for myself, even enlarging one set, and I've never had problems. In fact, the first time I went they showed me how to use the large format copier, they saw what I was doing and they had no problem with it. BTW, the copyright law has a provision which makes it legal to make copies of patterns so you don't need to use the original.

SHolby is right. I go all the time and make copies and have never had a problem. I did once a long time ago and told the person he needed to read the copyright law, now I just go in and do it. You just got one that had a hair up his bum and dumb at that.

Guess I'm just lucky, I happen to work in a machine shop (on the swing shift) and I have access to the engineering room and make my own copies of my plans on the blue print machine. Usually two copies of each sheet just in case I screw up the one I use to build with. I'm going to have to look into enlarging plans. How do I do it? What do you think about enlarging a HOG BIPE to somewhere around 1.80 4-stroke from the .90??

I recently had some old (1943) plans copied at Kinkos. Also had them make me a 150% copy. Both turned out excellent (was my first time using their services) and the total cost was under $10 for BOTH copies!

Only problem I DID have was they had a limit on the size they could do a copy of. Another set of plans I had was 38" wide. They said their equipment could handle a maximum of 36" wide. They sent me to another Kinkos in the area, telling me that Kinkos could handle the larger size. When I arrived, they said they could only do it on their color scanner (for a black-line on white paper copy) at a cost of $50 for one copy! I didn't think that was acceptable so didn't get my copy.

Where does one get a copy of something a little over the usual 36" wide for a similiar cost? I know people get blueprints copied and a lot of them are more than 36" wide. Surely they don't pay in the neighborhood of $50 a copy.

I remember that I xeroxed an engineering drawing a while back. I overlayed the xeroxed copy over the original and found that they did not match 100%. The copying process seems to be non-linear. Did you guys xeroxed your plans or blueprint ? I suppose blueprints can maintain the scale of the plan as this is what architects use............

Rajul,

You're 100% correct.

The distortion for a Xerox 3600 (the last one I measured) was 2% along the scan direction and <1% across the scan direction.

Plan printers / blue prints do not have the problem because the film is in contact with the paper. But as soon as you enlarge...?

I've heard in the past this could be a problem but it didn't seem to be the case in the plans I had copied. I don't know how Kinkos did it - I dropped the original plan off, told them what I wanted and returned several hours later to pick them up.

The plan I had copied (one normal size plus one at 150%) was an old 1943 Cleveland plan. I was amazed at how perfect and clean the results were. The copies were "black line on white paper" so I assume this is not a "blue print" process.

One thing I was concerned about was that, because the old Cleveland kits contained "printwood" rather than die-cut parts, I had just copied the printwood sheets on a xerox copier set at 150% and I was afraid the parts would not match the plan I had copied by Kinkos because the copies (for printwood and plans) were being done on two different machines. But I checked and everything seems to match perfectly. If there is any variation or error, I don't think it would be enough to worry about as far as building goes. In my case it's not a scale model (the plan is Cleveland's 7 foot Super Condor sailplane) so that's not a concern.

The company I fly for owns a blue print shop. Actually, blueprints are not always 100% either, but not enough difference t matter a lot. The problem with the copyright symbol is if the company that owns the plans catches them making copies of a copyrighted plan, the fine is pretty big, (more than a grand for the person and as much as $10,000 for the shop) so some are reluctant to do it. The girls that work in our shop are a pain in the tail. I take my plans in when they are at lunch to copy them. If you are doing it for you own use, you won't have a problem, but if you are copiing them for re-sale, you could get in a bind.
I tend to make copies and build from them so I don't trash the originals. Never used to do that, but tend to all the time now.

Another trick I stubbled on is to run the plans thru the copier in small sections 8 1/2 x 11. this minimumizes the distortion that seems to be ok at center, but grows toward the edges.
I set the darkness to maximum to get the max ink on the copy.

Then I cut and tape for the longer sections.
Now, get mama's steam iron out while shes away.
Put the photocopy, ink down, on balsa and iron away.
Ink xfers to the balsa, leaving a perfect trace to cut out parts.

Don't cut the originals, especially if they are borrowed.
I have good luck using wax paper as 'Plan Saver'. jet