Laser Cutting from Paper Plans

This article will give you an idea of what is involved with transforming paper plans of an R/C aircraft into parts that can be laser cut. This is a multi-step process and can take time. It involves scanning, conversion, editing, copying, creating some new drawings, and finally, laser cutting.

Litko Aerosystems can do all of this for you and provide you with laser cut parts for your radio controlled aircraft.

What are the First Steps?

Your plans will be scanned by us and converted to a vectorized drawing that can be manipulated in CAD software.

When a drawing is scanned into a computer, the output is called a raster image. A "raster" image means that the drawing is a "picture" of the original, in a format that can be displayed on a screen. So, the original paper drawing is now in the computer, but it is still in a pretty useless format. It needs to be turned into a computer drawing, just like a real drawing, that is composed of lines.

Converting a raster image to a vector drawing is call "vectorizing". This is done using a combination of software and real world knowledge. The process is not automatic. The drawing must be cleaned up and rotated (if necessary). The software must be told what kind of drawing it is, so that it knows how to interpret it. Certain things that the software doesn't know how to convert must be manually edited, this is where the real world knowledge comes into play. Some things need to be interpreted by a skilled operator.

Once finished with the conversion, we have a set of plans that can now be edited in CAD software.

Great! Cut My Parts!

We now have a computerized line drawing of the aircraft plans. Unfortunately, all we have is a computerized line drawing of the aircraft plans. All the parts are there, but they are not in a form that can be laser cut. The parts need to be separated into individual drawings, and grouped into the appropriate wood type so we produce them in the correct type and thickness of wood. Finally, they need to be placed on laser cutting templates so that we can actually cut the parts.

Laser Cutting

This is actually the easiest part of the process. Once the cutting templates are produced, laser cutting the parts is just a matter of securing the wood on the laser cutting machine, adjusting the settings, and cutting the parts.

What You Can Expect From Us

We can take your paper plans and produce laser-cut parts from them. Your laser cut parts will have edge quality that is unmatched compared to hand or die cut parts. Better edges mean stronger parts, and an aircraft that will assemble with a minimum of fuss. We save you the time and expense of interpreting your plan and cutting the parts yourself.

Work in Progress

This article is a work in progress. Please email us with questions, comments, or suggestions.