AO Drawings Scanner/copiers

[HIS LM]

I have thousands of AO size drawings taking up valuable floor space, can anyone recommend a Company or type of machine to scan and copy them to enable me to store them electronically.

[camp freddie]

I use a Xerox wide format scanner/ plotter that scans to pdf

[HIS LM]

Did you buy it if so how much are they and can you scan and print drawings

Edited by HIS LM on Wednesday 17th March 14:47

[camp freddie]

I rent it and only pay for paper that passes through the plotter. It's quite good, only problem is it's black and white. Yes you can scan and print upto A0 paper. The rental also includes maintainance which is handy

Have a look on ebay for any from companies that may be closing etc. I got an A3 colour printer/ scanner, as new condition, from a company that was closing

[jasperwade]

either buy/rent a scanner from stanford marsh or someone or if you just need to get rid of the backlog, someone like hobs will do it all for you:

http://www.hobsrepro.com/content/Services/Scanning...

we've got the xerox solution as above at work. Scans b/w or colour upto A0 and drops them into a folder on the server as either pdf or jpgs as you require

Edited by jasperwade on Wednesday 17th March 16:43

[shirt]

HIS LM said:

I have thousands of AO size drawings taking up valuable floor space, can anyone recommend a Company or type of machine to scan and copy them to enable me to store them electronically.

where I worked we used a company called cab-i-net to scan all drawings (tens of thousands we didn't want to redo in cad), create a drawings library and store the orginals at their warehouse.

depending on what you want to spend, I'd rent/buy a scanner and have someone I.t literate do the rest using a simple search engine.

[Sam_68]

We use a KIP 3000 printer/scanner. This can print in black and white, but can scan/copy in colour (it's set to send anything in colour to our colour plotter, elsewhere in the building, when you do colour copying).

No idea how much they cost, though - our IT geeks deal with purchasing for us.

[tlrracer]

Drop me a PM we have a brand new Contex colour scanner and can work out a real good deal for you. We can batch scan drawings into PDF so you can then archive your hard copy

[tlrracer]

OOPS forgot link [e-mail]

[HIS LM]

tlrracer said:

Drop me a PM we have a brand new Contex colour scanner and can work out a real good deal for you. We can batch scan drawings into PDF so you can then archive your hard copy

Ok PM done

At the moment the drawings are stored in Iron maidens and on rolls in racks the amount of floor space they occupy is vast so scanning to PC must be the way forward. We need to be able to print them in (B/W only) easily in order to fabricate the spare parts we sell. I said 10,000 but on reflection it is more like 20,000 drawings ! although not all of them are used all of the time.

[groomi]

I've used Data Capture Solutions in Slough before. We got the drawings scanned as .tif files, but I'm sure they could do .pdf if required.

If you do end up outsourcing to someone to scan for you, bear in mind they will try to sell you the idea of scanning straight into CAD. Don't bother, all you'll get back is a mass of broken lines completely useless as a CAD drawing.

Good luck.