Printing plans

[Phil Winks]

I've found some good plans for an aircraft that i want to build when the good weather goes south these plans are from the internet and need to find someone who can print them full size at a reasonable cost any one got any ideas

Phil

[Ernie]

Hi Phil, Achitects make use of print shops which often have large scale printers. Most large towns have at least one. Also, they will alter the scale of drawings..I have a Fokker D V111 that was enlarged to 1/4 scale from a three view in a book. problem is that the lines get thick, so if you want to be accurate, you will need to trace it.

ernie

[Pat (rActive) Harbord]

talk to kallkwik or prontaprint. They will probably have to send the file away, or will give you an email address to send it to. Ask them to check a couple of dimensions, at least wing tip to wing tip and firewall to fin, also don't be suprised if the file you have is a scan of a photo of a photo of a scan, eg it may already not be quite the right shape. So measure carefully side to side looking for inconsistencies. One last thing check the plan is out of copyright

[Phil Winks]

Thanks for the advice R all sounds good common sense the copyright issue shouldn't be a prob for personal use came of a free plans website

Phil

[Andy Green]

I use Isiplot it lets you scale plans, and prints out on A4 with alignment marks, I think its free to try and 10 Euros for a license.

Andy

[Steve Hargreaves - Moderator]

I use my local Prontaprint. I email them a pdf file & they do the necessary & print it out; I wander in a few hours later & collect it. Cost is about a fiver.

Two things....check that the plan is dimensionally accurate by which I mean 1" on the plan really is 1"....some file manipulation can alter this so that 1" on the plan is really 0.8" (no, don't ask me how I know.....). A lot of downloaded plans have a "ruler" that you can measure to check they are correct.

Second....putting the plan face down on your wood & ironing it transfers a copy to the wood very nicely...use a hot (cotton/linen) setting & make sure the wife isn't looking when you sneak the iron into the shed!!!

[Terence Lynock]

 use Isiplot it lets you scale plans, and prints out on A4 with alignment marks, I think its free to try and 10 Euros for a license.

Andy

Hi Andy,

              I use  Tileprint which is about the same thing, has one or two glitches working with XP but does a great job and is very accurate to the crop marks, saves a lot of money at the local reprographics shop and pays for itself with the first job,

 I stick the bits together with Pritstik and if the crop marks are too close to the edge on both sheets just cut a piece of 1'' wide paper and stick this under one sheet edge then stick the other sheet down onto that,

regards            Terry

[Steve Hargreaves - Moderator]

Here's one....courtesy of The Daily Telegraph actually but I can copy with the best of 'em

www.blockposters.com lets you upload an image (jpg or gif) & will then convert it into a tiled pdf & return it to you for printing. No idea how well it works in practice but it seemed like a possibility to me!!!