HELP???
I have designed an antique punchcard in Make, with very precisely spaced tractor feed wholes and precisely spaced patterning holes, and can not get a print out in real size. I have tried exporting in 1:1 scale but it is NOT in 1:1 scale when I open the PDF. The hole spacing has to be extremely precise or the rows of holes “drift” and the patterning fingers do not line up with the holes.
I had mined the community and help multiple times. I have printed using the Views help page using every suggestion there. I also found the thread about exporting 1:1 as PDF- but it is not 1:1 when exported. I am dealing with millimeters and fractions thereof. Try two deco card.skp (1.2 MB) here is a copy of the file the vertical spacing is 5.25mm between rows the main body spacing is 5mm horizontally. spacing is center to center of course. I am using a konica Minolta Magicolor 4650DN and WIndows 10 32 bit.
here is a copy of the 1:1 PDF file Try two deco card.pdf (1.5 MB)Actually I have made far more than 2 of these cards, and really want to export as SVC to a cutting die machine to cut the cards out. But until I can confirm spacing is absolutely correct and can ACTUALLY achieve that spacing to test against the old punchcards, I won’t waste my time or blades cutting…
Sorry, it wouldn’t let two attachments in one post
There is only one card… top and bottom to see if the spacing holds true down the page without wasting toner… I had been printing ALL of the holes but decided that less is easier to edit… if needed… but I can’t seem to get true 1:1 scaling while printing, so I don’t know… until I switched to Sketchup (I had been a woodworking SU user prior to this, but nothing so tiny in my past) the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition Plus doesn’t go smaller than tenths of a millimeter in spacing. So I have learned that by the time you get to row 40, the is a 1-2mm discrepency (as in the printed holes are drifting up or down by 1 or 2 mm) between 5.2mm and 5.3mm vertical spacing…
I should have said to print in landscape… it does fit that way…
Antique punchcard? Antique!? Twist the knife in my chest again. 
What size paper are you trying to print on?
these are for antique knitting machines made circa 1945-1990. in landscape mode the “Passap Jac” cards or “Passap Deco” cards fit on a letter sized paper, but the Die cutter I will be using later (if I can ever get printed and confirm spacing) will take up to 12inches wide and 24 inches long, so not a problem… just trying to keep the file able to print on a letter sized sheet of paper for confirmation…
My machines are older than I am… and still knit gorgeous fabric… I just want to be able to expand their repertoire.
Does this work? I deleted the guide points and moved the top set of holes closer to the bottom set. I also moved them to the origin because placing the model at a long distance from the origin is a bad thing.
This is the Print Preview pane, then, showing that the two sets of holes will print on a single sheet.
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That preview looks more like the ones I got in the SSDE+ program that were off by tiny amounts by row 40… and the margins look about right. I had the horizontal spacing figured out. it is the vertical spacing over the length of the card that is giving me fits. it isn’t a normal spacing… I originally thought it was european 5mm spiral binding spacing vertically, but it is a little bigger than 5mm apart.
I did think to try to move the whole closer to axis, but the program froze up on me. so I finally hollered for help…
Ok, it had finally started working again so I moved it to the red axis and will try to get it closer.
When I uncheck fit to page and use model extents, the scale side stays greyed out… bot it usually is in 1:1… but I had tried to input the measurements in mm in page size…
In order to be able to print to scale, the camera needs to be set to Parallel Projection. When I opened your SKP file, it was set to Perspective.
Denisroy, yours looks just like what I have been getting. the margins tell me immediately that it is too small… when printed the vertical spacing was actually about 4.05mm vertically by calipers. Thanks, for helping me try to figure this out… when designing in SU for woodworking projects I have never had this problem… cause all graphics are scaled down to print…
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I swear it was set to parallel when I started out!! Blast! I just moved it closer to the axis and reset it to parallel, so let me try printing once again…
Holes.pdf (209.7 KB)
How does this PDF work out for you? Print it with no scaling (that’s a setting in Reader/Acrobat) and measure the spacing.
Well… I just report what I see.
The thing is, this same sort of thing could be useful in woodworking, too.
The spacing in the holes.pdf was too wide… I may have to actually export as svg and cut a couple of pages… maybe first and last rows… I just hate wasting paper.
Yes that is a Jac40, There were actually three such devices made for different gauge machines: Jac40 (blue) tines spaced 4.5mm apart for standard Japanese machines and 9mm bulky Japanese machines using every other needle/tine; Passap Jac (Silver and red) for 5mm Swiss Passap machines, and Knittax Jac (gold) for 5.3mm Japanese machines. I have the first two Jacs (blue and silver) and also have 6 knitting machines, 5 of which use punchcards, and three Passaps (one has electronic patterning on the front bed only), a fine gauge 3.6mm, a standard gauge 4.5mm, and a bulky gauge 9mm, Japanese machines.
Yes I am lucky enough to have a blank Passap Jac card as well as several mass produced pre-punched cards for the Deco (has a wider margin but the same hole spacing). I have three Jac40 mass produced pre-punched cards and no blank Jac40 cards. I have multiple blank japanese cards, both blank and pre-punched.
Punching the cards is exhausting and messy. and very likely to end up with a ruined card. These things are expensive-- the blank Passap cards go for as much as $40 for a single card. There is a video on youtube where a lady designs a card in JW CAD in Japanese and prints and cuts the card on the die cutter I have… using plain kraft paper card and patterns would be easy to make and use if I can get the dimensions right. The holes have to be precisely spaced for the little metal tines to go through them without cutting the edges of a misplaced hole and ruining the pattern and card… The Jac accessories especially allow patterning on the back of double bed knitting or ribbing… so they are extremely versitile IF I can produce cards for them…
Thanks for your help.
The dimensions I showed in the PDF are based on what you drew although they get rounded. The actual vertical spacing is 5.25 mm. If they aren’t correct, that’s because of your spacing and not the print out. Exactly what spacing are you looking for?
I used the measure tool to set points to snap to when drawing the circles… I just went back and measured them… 5mm…
I am personally beginning to thing it is my printer adding a spin on everything… Let me see if I can take a couple of photos…
An actual Passap Deco Card: Card Pattern Number 9a
This is what the file is making a blank of… ALL holes punched so that the holes can be deleted easily to build another pattern.
5 mm horizontally. What are they supposed to be vertically?