The first suggestion was a “have you considered” the second was a fun joke. This one is unsolicited extra advice, so please forgive me.
You could have a linux server with an nvidia gpu, and it could perform the expensive image operations. Then later, move that to gpu aws machines, or whatever. I’m really not an expert on all of that, and you sure sound like you know what you’re doing, but I used to be an expert in image processing and I know a gpu is a good tool for this job. We have always worked on local machines with nvidia gpus, but every time we optimize code by converting it to cuda, we see huge gains, 20x-200x in total time depending on how optimized the original code was. We’ve also done that in docker containers on machines with fat gpus.
I’ll stop trying to convince you though. You are much closer to the whole problem than I am.
Thanks for the update and helpful information. None of our code is optimised for CUDA as we put it all together on Mac and Linux. However we’ll get a cheap CUDA card and put it in our ESXI server and play with it there. We can do PCI passthrough on the nVidia cards and attach it to a Linux server. We don’t have a single dedicated Linux server in the business any more, we have rather lot of virtualised servers though.
Whilst there may be massive gains to be had, porting our code to work with CUDA may be hard work and I’m wary of how much work is needed and yet another system to learn. I know there is some stuff like the Canny Edge detection that is already around which may help.
This seems the most straight forward. I wouldn’t even worry about laying them out and making registration marks before hand. I’d just get the outlines scanned in and “vectorized” then lay them out in digitally in the svg editor (inkscape).
@GSEninja I’ve always used GIMP as a free alternative to photoshop.
I took a top down picture with the tools on graph paper. I imported that picture into Fusion 360 and scaled so that the graph paper was the correct spacing.
I then used a sketch to manually outline one of the wrenches. What I then found is that because most of them are the same shape, I could copy and paste that sketch and rather quickly adjust the points on it for each of the other tools. After doing this a few times, you get really good with working with splines and it didn’t take too long to just do it by hand.
Wrenches and screwdrivers were pretty easy. Sockets were even easier. Those are just circles.
Some of the odd shaped tools took the longest, but I wasn’t looking for perfection.
This was on a portable tool box that I was doing for a friend. I can’t seem to find the pictures now.
My tool box is too small for the tools that I have. I couldn’t do this to my current setup even if I wanted to. I do have about 6 drawers in a cabinet right next to the tool box that isn’t being used. Maybe I should finally get around to moving tools around to those un-used drawers…
The 8.5x11 trick worked great!
A couple important points for anyone that wants to do this in the future
make sure your lines are connected and DARK
place several scale and alignment markers on your sheets
scan and save as a PNG vice JPEG
clean up the lines and stitch the images in your preferred photo editing software (I went old school and used MS Paint)
I then used Inkscape to trace the bitmap and create a vector image
I had to split the cut into two separate g codes, only because I’m limited to a 430mm workspace
measure multiple times when placing your mat… as you can see, I was off by about 15mm on either side
The kaizen foam worked great at a cut depth of 6mm using the 1/16” bit… took about 45 minutes (total) and then I was able to rip out the insert. The Kaizen foam is meant to be separated as it’s layered, came out pretty easily.
Looks great. I’m glad it worked out without too much messing around. The use of a flatbed scanner to get around camera perspective was a well tested suggestion, but the rest of the process was just hypothetical. Usually there is a hiccup or two when I go to implement a hypothetical idea.
I didn’t even know I had it when I got it. It’s the smelling smoke all the time now that sucks. I guess it’s a side effect of an upper respiratory viral infection.
I knew I had it, wasn’t good but at least I had had all my vaccinations, so the impact was reduced. My other half who is fitter and a lot healthier than me, is still badly laid down with it.
An old friend of our next door neighbour was diagnosed with Covid-19 a week last Saturday and died of it five days later. Sasly, It’s still a killer for some people.
