AHH
NOW WERE TALKING you get a pass
huie
Rhino and anyone else using APS3000 or Aku Shaper. I found this incredibly useful tool on the Tree to Sea website. It converts the APS/AKU file into a printable template from your own printer. Just print the doc and tape the pages together. No hassle, no fuss. Very low cost.
http://jedail.free.fr/programs/HBTM.jnlp
You can read about on www.treetosea.org Just click on the Design Process forum and it’s the first one listed.
It works for all types of boards, not just HWS.
It already does that!
Oops!
I was wrong. Jedail’s tool is for HWS only. “It skins the APS file and outputs a .pdf file which APS doesn’t do.” This is in relation to the ribs only. You can already print the outline from APS.
Level of stoke = 100%
Attn to detail = 50%
Oh well, carry on troops.
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My company has a blueprinting service and I sell blueprint copiers and plotters for a living.
Funny thing is, even though I have free access to all of this equipment I have never bothered to print out a template. I just use Aku to give me the few measurements I need to put a couple of finish nails in a piece of doorskin and bend a thin strip of wood and trace it.
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Exactly! Why not skip a few steps....
(I'd suggest plastic or masonite for template material, and I might batten a little different, but that's quibbling. You've got the right idea)
If you can put the file in an eps format, take it to a sign company and have them plot it for you on paper. In our sign company we regularly get 4'x 8' pieces of cardboard, 1/8" foam board, masonite and pvc sheets as packing material for our more expensive substrate. I keep the 1/4" pvc sheets and route full size templates on our CNC router table. Check with your local sign guy, if he doesn't have the large sheets of cardboard in stock, maybe he could save some from his next order.
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If you can put the file in an eps format, take it to a sign company and have them plot it for you on paper. In our sign company we regularly get 4'x 8' pieces of cardboard, 1/8" foam board, masonite and pvc sheets as packing material for our more expensive substrate. I keep the 1/4" pvc sheets and route full size templates on our CNC router table. Check with your local sign guy, if he doesn't have the large sheets of cardboard in stock, maybe he could save some from his next order.
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That really simplifies things but what keeps the eps format files scaled? Do you have to save the image to a certain page size? Seems like with images, your scaling can change depending on what you "print" to (in your case CNC) or what program you open the file with. I use ACAD, so I know what scale and orientation my plot will be. I've been wanting to take templates over to a sign shop and have them done like yours, but haven't really pursued it yet.
Duh Kinko’s monster bit me years ago and I simply purchased a series of large format printers of my own.
Personally, I plonk all drawings into PDF format for printing. Still scaleable and perhaps* the most widely accepted format out there for printing as a single job or across multiple sheets. Native scaling in Adobe Reader works well.
By the way, my used Epson Pro 4000 (17" wide by roll and sheet printing on everything from rice paper to veneer which is what I’ve used for everything board building over the years) is for sale. It needs Ink and I’m over paying for it. Look them up on ebay, make me an offer and pick it up in the Outer Banks.
*Most CAD programs and almost all printing applications will handle PDF and for anything that can’t there’s usually a port utility.
My company has a blueprinting service and I sell blueprint copiers and plotters for a living. You want to go to a blueprinting service for this NOT TO KINKOS!!! Look in your local yellow pages for a blueprint shop. The people at kinkos are not going to know what you need and you may not either. If they run it as if its a graphics file on an inkjet plotter with inkjet media they are going to charge you a bloody fortune. All you need is a b/w outline printed on the toner based plotter on 20# paper. I would expect the retail cost for this to be about $10 depending on where you are at. Just to give you an idea of what the printer's cost (without labor or markup) is to run the machine, it should be about 4.7 cents per square foot including the paper. A toner based plotter costs anywhere from $10,000 to over $40,000 on average.
Make sure when you go you have a print ready PDF or TIFF file that the printer doesn't have to monkey with. Put it on a thumb drive ready to print. There is at least one Swaylocks member that gets his templates printed at my office.
Funny thing is, even though I have free access to all of this equipment I have never bothered to print out a template. I just use Aku to give me the few measurements I need to put a couple of finish nails in a piece of doorskin and bend a thin strip of wood and trace it.
It would make it easy to print out a proof on an 8.5"x 11" and mark the measurements for them to scale to. You can send me a file to look over if you want. Heck - send me a return envelop with postage and I would be happy to print something for you and send back at no charge.
I read back through this thread and found a gem from Allan Gibbons. Learning how to make a template from your eyes and hands is an important step in learning to shape.
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Its really not very complicated, people!
Get some dimensions (length, width center, width at 12'' and 24'' from nose and tail). Crib them off a board that you like or draw them on graph paper (or in a CAD program if you really feel the need to involve a computer).
Then, mark those dimensions on a blank, and stretch masking (preferably a darker-colored) tape between the points, until you get a nice curve. Repeat on the other side- (Hey, if you can't create balanced curves this way, forget trying to shape them).
Dust the tape edge with spray paint or graphite, and cut out with a handsaw. Yes- a handsaw- it makes the truest curves-under-tension.
Clean up the cut. Make any adjustments the you deem necessary. Yes- YOU- its your baby-no one else is shaping this board!
Now you've got an actual, non-virtual hunk of material in front of you, and you will begin to feel those curves.
When you get it the way you like it, trace the actual curve onto a sheet of doorskin or 1/8'' masonite.
I've always cut out my templates with a big wormdrive Skilsaw (I learned this from a shipwright). Using a panel-cutting blade, set at just a hair over the thickness of the template material, which is tacked or clamped to a 8 foot long piece of pine shelving, cut the bulk of the curve with the Skilsaw, and straight-cut the tighter radii, and leave some room for wings and/or bumps. You'll have to use a handsaw for those areas.
Then, clamp the cut template material to the pine board (which itself is clamped to a worktable or shaping stand) and use the power planer (NOT a sander) to clean up and true up the edge. The planer will maintain the same curve-under-tension set by the handsaw and the skilsaw.
Finish up with a sharp hand plane and a sanding block.
The whole operation maybe takes an hour and a half, and you'll have both a planshaped blank AND a new template. (and a deeper appreciation of that curve).
Computers are cool, and everything, but part of the joy of making a surfboard (or anything) by hand is the HANDWORK!
[edit] ps. what Ambrose said...
[edit part II] maybe I'm experiencing early-onset geezerhood, but all this talk about beers-per-board and Akus sounds pupule! Its turning it into paint-by-numbers...
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Allan Gibbons is truly a master shaper, now just don’t ask him how to copy Merrick’s master templates, which he helped me do, with AM’s blessings, 20 something years ago.