Transfering printed plans to foam board
- Thread starter janast
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Crazy Goats
Active member
Welcome to the madness.
Here are two articles to get you started.
Search both the Articles section and the forums, there is more helpful information out there.
http://flitetest.com/articles/make-reusable-templates-from-plans
http://flitetest.com/articles/how-to-from-pdf-plans-to-parts
Here are two articles to get you started.
Search both the Articles section and the forums, there is more helpful information out there.
http://flitetest.com/articles/make-reusable-templates-from-plans
http://flitetest.com/articles/how-to-from-pdf-plans-to-parts
dengar256
Member
This is a quick video but it helped me out with the little details. the other suggest I have is find a place that can print the full plans to start. I had real aliment issues with the tiled plans. And know once you start there is no going back.
https://youtu.be/wxIeXBna8YI
https://youtu.be/wxIeXBna8YI
I believe I have found the superior way of transferring plans to paper.
PINS! The tiny ones with little colored balls on the top. First, you lay the plan on the board, no tape. Start on one corner of the cut line, mark it with a pin through the paper and foam. Continue placing pins in every angle change or every 6 inches. When finished, remove pins and plans, and using the plans for reference, begin connecting the pin holes on the foam with a pen and a straight edge. Then, cut!
I feel this is the best in my opinion. I always hated cutting through paper into the foam, so this allows me to cut just the foam.
GOOD LUCK!
PINS! The tiny ones with little colored balls on the top. First, you lay the plan on the board, no tape. Start on one corner of the cut line, mark it with a pin through the paper and foam. Continue placing pins in every angle change or every 6 inches. When finished, remove pins and plans, and using the plans for reference, begin connecting the pin holes on the foam with a pen and a straight edge. Then, cut!
I feel this is the best in my opinion. I always hated cutting through paper into the foam, so this allows me to cut just the foam.
GOOD LUCK!
I did something similar with my TT (first build). It was a learning experience to say the least. I started by holding the paper down while cutting the outline, which quickly resulted in many many little cuttings of paper. I then started cutting segments that I would then connect after removing the template but I was still dissatisfied with the lack of straight lines. The last technique I tried was to mark the corners, changes in angle, score cuts, and etch marks with a little cut through the template and connecting the ends with a straight edge. This just left curves which I carefully scored the paper through the template and went back and finished the cut carefully freehand. The final result was a little uneven in some areas, but as a whole it's a plane that I'm quite proud of, or at least it was until I spiked it into the ground a few times while learning to fly. Now it's all bent and banged up, and I'm not sure if it'll fly (it should, I fixed it up pretty well). My next build I am definitely making a reusable template as recommended in the video link above so I can make new pieces as I need them.
King Theodin88
Junior Member
ok so no matter what i do, when i go to print the plans for the mini arrow, if i select to print the actual size, several parts of the wings will be cut off at the bottom of the page, the only way i can get the plans to print right is when i choose fit to page, but then its scaled down to 97% of the actual plan size, which in turn would make the plane smaller than its supposed to be. Im using the 8.5 x 11 paper and the pdf document size is 7.5 x 10.5 IDK what the heck to do. if i could figure out how to slide the pdf document up on the actual paper it would be fine and the inch and cenimeter legend and tile number would be slightly cut off but the plan would be its actual size. im pulling my hair out!! help!!
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King Theodin88
Junior Member
heres a pic of what my problem is if you can make it out.
Definitely not an expert here, but it sounds like you may have a margin issue. Make sure you border is set to 0.5 inches in your print options and if it is still an issue you may try lowering this incrementally to see if it solves the problem. Just my $0.02 hope it helps
Grakon
Member
King, I had the same issue with one of my printers. But the other one printed it out fine. I have a suggestion that you can try I don't know if it will change your margins to work correctly. But there is a program PDF995 you would need to download it's free. It is in two parts if I recall correctly. It's nothing more than a printer driver for PDF's. I use it to create PDF files for AutoCAD and sometimes from word documents or other PDF's, tiff's etc... You would load up the pdf you want and simply print using PDF995 it will create a new PDF file that you can save on you computer. Then print that through your regular printer. Like I said I am not sure if that will fix your problem but it may be worth a try.
King Theodin88
Junior Member
thanks for the replies, your help is much appreciated! I will try both the solutions.
Grakon
Member
As fer transferring on the the foam board. For all of the tangent lines I simply take a tack and poke a hole into the foam board at each angle point. Then remove the paper use my strait edge and cut. For the rounded areas I take a pen and draw over the line, it make a slight indent in the paper, I mark it out with a pencil after removing the paper and then cut. Some times not removing the paper works just fine also. It's always best to use several different size metal strait edges. Also if you have a lot of tiles you can poke a hole thru one reference point with a tack and line it up with the other reference point. Then poke it thru to the foam board and tape it down... If all goes according to plan everything will line up... But I don't think that you can ever be perfect.
King Theodin88
Junior Member
Ive downloaded the pdf995 in the two parts and when the page is set up and i try to print it only makes a file to save, it wont print anything. so i open the file and try to print it and it tries to save another file and so i change the printer driver back to the cannon printer driver and print it and its back to the oversized crap. and as for the printer margins i cant find anywhere to change the margin size. im about done with the scratch build crap. been trying for a week now and NOTHING works to get it printing right to the actual size instead of scaled down. what in the helllllllll. so ungodly frustraited. i dont understand why we cant download the plans, and print them as the actual size. whys it so hard?
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I know it can be frustrating, but if you hang in there and find a combination that works for you, it can be very rewarding. Just curious... what would be wrong with a 97% plane? As long as you accommodate for the actual thickness of the foam on your a/b folds it should fit and fly, right?
Yeah, you're not even going to notice at 97%. A&B folds have a bit of wiggle room. Build it and fly it.
King Theodin88
Junior Member
oh, okay! will do lol. i had just figured the center section where the battery and all the equipment goes would be just a tad too small. and also the firewall/motor mount would be a hair smaller, which would cause issues with the motor bolting up. if none of thatll be a problem ill just get to building! =D
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AltxF4
Junior Member
Hey Sponz, do you know if there are any plans on going back to some of the old plans and doing updates such as the alignment cross hairs on the mini arrow tiled plans? I first built an arrow, then built a Tiny trainer. the TT did not have the alignments cross hairs and it made for some extra difficulty in taping up plans.
