Help needed

[Waylon80]

How would y'all draw this up? I've gotta cut 60 of them. 2.5"x4"

[tturanger]

Get a photo of it in front of a sheet of white paper with minimum shadow. Upload and vectorize the image. Convert the images to curves/lines/nodes. Match the dimensions of the shape to the dimensions off the piece.

[Capstone]

Just like what he said...

Personally, my Brother Multi Function Printer Copier works awesome for this very thing. I scan it as a jpeg and have it set to instantly import it into Inkscape; then just follow the previous post. trace the bitmap and match the drawing up to the actual measurements. Honestly, I would have already had it done in the time it took to write this reply.

anyone with a plasma table that isn't using a scanner or camera phone to create parts this way is ignoring a huge amount of potential business.

[Gamelord]

Very difficult to do with any accuracy from such a terrible picture. At least put it against a solid one color background and line up the tape to one of the edges.

[Waylon80]

Here are some better pictures of what it is I'm working with. I tried just scanning it using our office printer/scanner then put it in Inkscape but didn't have any luck. Then I tried just tracing with a pen and then Inkscape not much better either. Any suggestions?

[MetalTorcher]

This is not perfect but the best I could do with your drawing. It will probably need some tweaking yet.

[motoguy]

I prefer to use my flatbed scanner for parts that will fit on it. Seems to give me less parallax error that way. For things to large for the scanner, I use my phone camera and just try to stay centered over the part. Or, take multiple photos and patch them together.

This one, I'd put it on my flatbed scanner, with a textured white paper towel on top of it. The paper towel seems to keep my scanner from auto-cropping too tightly on the part (chopping off part). Scan it. Open the pdf in Corel or Inkscape, and trace the important parts of the drawing on a separate layer. Holes, contours, etc. Once I have the important features roughly traced, I delete the scanned image, and start trimming/attaching my lines. Print out a 1:1 copy, and overlay/compare it to the original. Adjust as needed. Cut.

Did this yesterday, as a matter of fact. Buddy of mine builds race cars. He was building a rear end for a customer, and ran out of brake brackets. Luckily for him, he'd given me one a while back to copy (which I hadn't done yet). I went through the above process.

Here is the part he needed.

20160525_180240_resized.jpg

Here is the tracing I did of the important features. I traced this on top of the scanned image.

Features.JPG

Here I have trimmed/joined the rough tracing.

completed.JPG

Here are the parts I cut. I undercut the hole, as he is going to drill and tap them. Ignore the ugly hole on the right bracket...I forgot to turn my compressed air back on to the plasma on the first cut...

20160525_180251_resized.jpg

[Waylon80]

This is not perfect but the best I could do with your drawing. It will probably need some tweaking yet.

Thanks a bunch! I'll take a look at it when I get back to the office.

[Waylon80]

I prefer to use my flatbed scanner for parts that will fit on it. Seems to give me less parallax error that way. For things to large for the scanner, I use my phone camera and just try to stay centered over the part. Or, take multiple photos and patch them together.

This one, I'd put it on my flatbed scanner, with a textured white paper towel on top of it. The paper towel seems to keep my scanner from auto-cropping too tightly on the part (chopping off part). Scan it. Open the pdf in Corel or Inkscape, and trace the important parts of the drawing on a separate layer. Holes, contours, etc. Once I have the important features roughly traced, I delete the scanned image, and start trimming/attaching my lines. Print out a 1:1 copy, and overlay/compare it to the original. Adjust as needed. Cut.

Did this yesterday, as a matter of fact. Buddy of mine builds race cars. He was building a rear end for a customer, and ran out of brake brackets. Luckily for him, he'd given me one a while back to copy (which I hadn't done yet). I went through the above process.

Here is the part he needed.

20160525_180240_resized.jpg

Here is the tracing I did of the important features. I traced this on top of the scanned image.

Features.JPG

Here I have trimmed/joined the rough tracing.

completed.JPG

Here are the parts I cut. I undercut the hole, as he is going to drill and tap them. Ignore the ugly hole on the right bracket...I forgot to turn my compressed air back on to the plasma on the first cut...

20160525_180251_resized.jpg

Yeah I tried the whole paper on the back side but with the bent rod already welded to the back side it made it alittle difficult. But I will say I liked the way you used the circles to get perfect curves. I'll give it a try and see what I get. I'm just glad I've only got to draw it up once lol. Customer wants 60 brackets a month so we're pretty excited about doing it since this will be our first contracted piece of work.

[seajinx]

Here is my try on it. this is taken from your drawing and sized to specified dimensions of 2.5 X 4 inches. hope this works, at least give you something to work with.