Paper print to part wizard

[lto]

What would be an efficient way to go from a paper print to 2D cutout part using part wizard? Some of these would be on prints up to 36" wide which I was hoping to get scanned at Staples. They only output in .tif or .jpeg. Thanks for any ideas.

[Brady Watson]

Well...you could do a few different things. On parts that large, I transfer them to 1/8" masonite and cut them out with a jigsaw. Then I prop them up on the spoilboard and scan them in using the SB probe edge-findging routine.

If you are looking to trace the actual scan (after you get it to JPG etc) you can do a few things. Use Acme TraceArt or CorelTrace to create a vector outline from JPG. You can also import the JPG into most CAD programs and trace it out by hand using a polyline tool ~ then export as DXF. Sometimes you can get away with taking a good picture of the large format printout, with a tape measure in the picture (for scale) and trace it out that way as well.

You won't be able to do anything as far as tracing goes in PW.

-Brady

[lto]

Thanks Brady,
I'm just starting out with my shopbot and it's turning out like many other challenges I've taken. If it were possible to forsee all the potential difficulties I would likely have been overwhelmed and never started. But this too requires just sticking to it until conquered. Anyway, I had a group of parts carefully laid out for best yeild on a 10 foot long x 24" sheet of paper. Staples had some difficulty in scanning it, and I didn't realize until I had it home in the computer that they had used a resolution of 600 dpi. The resulting tif file was huge. I tried to open in Rasterfratz but my computer didn't have enough memory. I might try it on another computer but was wondering if this is even a practical idea.

Question; If I probed all my different parts, how would I optimize them on my material? The parts have hardly any straight lines and I was fitting them as close as I could using a 1/2" bit. The one material is a 1" x 5 1/2" x 120" piece of poly deck board. The other is the same material in a 1 1/2" x 9 1/2" x 120" board.

[Brady Watson]

It's sometimes easiest when nesting parts to offset them to the outside by the diameter of the bit. Then group the offsets with the originals...shift them around where everything fits and just delete the offsets and make a toolpath. This method will save you from calculating the toolpath every time you move a part a little.

To answer your question about the probe & nesting...when you probe them in, do so as a DXF/Polyline. You can then import that DXF directly into PartWizard and nest as you see fit. While the probe CAN make parts right from the scan to SBP ~ I like to look over the parts before I cut and make sure they are to size using the Transform function in PW.

-Brady