Printing scale errors

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Anselm
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Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2022 10:44 pm

Printing scale errors

Post by Anselm » Sat Mar 12, 2022 11:56 pm

I am using Greta Stella to print nets on paper to be transferred to other media. I am scaling the net to a specified edge length and printing edge and angle details on the net one facelet at a time. This is all good but for the size of one printed net. On one printer (A4) the edge length is exact to the specified length as far as I can measure it, on the second printer (A3) the hardcopy is about 1.6% too big. That might not seem like much but if there is confusion between the actual size of the net and the dimension printed on it will be enough to prevent the model from assembling properly.

I could re-scale each time I use the A3 printer but then if the actual size is correct the printed dimension will be too small. Also if I want to print larger facelets on the A3 and smaller ones on the A4 and forget to re-scale it will be a mess.

1) Why is this happening?

2) Is there any way I can re-calibrate the erroneous printer?

3) If I cannot fix the printer is there any way to re-calibrate Stella so the printed dimension and physical size of the printed net on a specifies printer agree?

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robertw
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Re: Printing scale errors

Post by robertw » Sun Mar 13, 2022 1:48 pm

Sorry, I haven't heard of this happening before. I guess the printer itself isn't printing at quite the size it's supposed to. I'm afraid there's no way to fix this from within Stella, except as you said by scaling the whole model accordingly, but then printed measurements will be slightly wrong. I'm not sure why you need both though. If building a physical model, do you need to print the dimensions? If not, do you need the actual size to be exact?

Anselm
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2022 10:44 pm

Re: Printing scale errors

Post by Anselm » Mon Mar 14, 2022 2:33 am

This work is being done in a workshop environment with various participants and I was concerned about confusion if the actual dimensions and the annotated value didn't match. I will re-scale the images on the problematic printer and print the angles but not the dimensions, and tell people to transfer the outlines from the images but to use the annotated angles to set up the saws.

We don't usually check the hardcopy of printers to see if it is the nominated size. I wonder how many printers are accurate and how many not? Just another one of life's little trials.

Thanks Robert

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