Help needed copying patterns

[Andy_T]

I’ve recently brought a scroll saw to fore fill the wishes of my three very demanding clients. (toys for my three children).

I thought technology was here to help me, how wrong I was. We got some patterns of toys to be cut out on the scroll saw and I thought it would be simple to copy them using my scanner, move the images closer together to save wood, duplicate the image on the page to give me the number of copies we need then print them out, stick the new pattern to the plywood and cut out, simple! Oh no. I could use the scanner to copy the pattern and print full size but when scanning the image and moving things about in MSpaint or powerpoint things got all out of scale when printing. after using nearly a ream of paper I ended up just copying the original pattern a number of time and cutting them out with scissors gluing onto another piece of paper and copying again on the scanner to get the final pattern to stick to the wood.

Surly with more computing power that it took to put man on the moon at my disposal this should have been a quick simple task. Can anyone help and tell he what software I need to get (hopefully free or already on my computer) and how I can do this simple task.

Please help before I take a felling axe to my laptop!


thanks Andrew

 

[chrispuzzle]

The way images are displayed on computers doesn't necessarily coincide with how they are printed. When resizing pictures you need to maintain the "aspect ratio" - the proportions of the original picture - and also pay attention to how many "dots per inch" the printer is going to print.

In short, because the computer allows us to change the size, scale and print qualities of a picture, it also allows us to mess it up

If you don't want to wrestle with computer graphics programs, your method of copying the pictures individually and making a collage of them is as good as any. It is exactly what I do when making composite pictures.

 

[hawkinob]

Hi,
There is a programme:-

http://rapidresizer.com/

which should help however it isn't FREE although it can be downloaded for a FREE trial.
It's pretty good, someone I know has it.
Regards,
Bob H.

 

[StevieB]

Paper, Scissors and Glue. Three staples of the scrollers armoury :wink:

Seriously, most of us use spray adhesive or pritt stick becuase you want the pattern to run with a particular grain orientation - especially for multipart toys.

Steve

 

[mr grimsdale]

Or cut out a card stencil for each different item. Draw round with a hard pencil. This way you can pack them in tight and also make the best use of odd off-cuts etc.

 

[loftyhermes]

You need a graphics program that will let you trace objects and then reposition them, like Corel Draw (expensive). I don't know if Inkscape or Gimp have the ability to trace objects but both these programs are free so give them a try.