Hi all I have some large (A0) technical drawings that need scanning but am having trouble finding anywhere with a large flatbed scanner. Tried a couple of places with roll scanners but there's been too much distortion for the scans to be useable.. Does anyone know somewhere in the Cambridge area or that takes postal order which won't cost the earth?
dumb question but have you tried googling large format scanning in cambridge? 2 mins in and i came across this place that can scan up to 80" which iirc is just over A0 size http://www.plan-itrepro.co.uk/index.php/services/scanning
Also iirc anything that size is going to be that type of scanner. Not looked at large format scanning since uni but from what I remember flatbeds tend to top out at A2.
Op is after flat bed scanning. Tbh your going to struggle to find one nowadays, Asking around your local universities/museums would be your best bet. If the drawings are dimensioned it will be faster to just redraw them in cad not to mention more accurate. (printed scale drawings should never be trusted especially old ones)
Yeah, I was there this morning! They're hand drawn plans of musical instruments which are rather more complicated to reproduce, thanks for the suggestion
Just a thought you could try photogrammetry and create 3D model then set up a camera to get a 2D view.
The way the describe it's less a scanner as most know them and more 'lay it on a table and take a photograph from above'.
That should work well if properly set up. One of my clients has her oil paintings reproduced that way at a copying company near me set up by an old friend. He has been doing it years and has the polarised lighting set up perfectly. Over time he has moved from medium format film to MF digital and now to a high res Nikon DSLR, as it is just as capable as any of its predecessors. Camera alignment and parallelism is obviously important, and with a proper rig isn't a problem. That's the only way that I can see it being done well.
Can't you scan multiple sections on a flat bed and stitch them together afterwards. We do this quite often for clients who want art prints reproducing and with photoshops alignment tools, you can achieve an almost perfect reproduction.
The problem with technical drawings is that "almost perfect" can mean the difference between functional and non-functional. (I've used that method with an A4 scanner I got for £1 at a car boot, to scan larger schematics - and it works pretty well (PDF warning), but I'm not worried about whether a given line is a few millimetres shorter or longer than it used to be.)
I whole heartedly agree, if a perfect reproduction is required, tiling multiple items in photoshop will not be suitable. In past experience, finding an accurate flat-bed scanner larger than A2 is extremely difficult or incredibly expensive.
