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Compensating for Inaccurate Printers

 

If your printer distorts the templates, all is not lost! pyRouterJig includes a way to scale your template to compensate for the distortion.

Steps:

  • Save your template and then print it out.

  • Using a text editor, open your .pyrouterjig file. On Windows machines, you can find this in your “user” directory.  Typically, it is in C:\users\<login name>.  On a Mac, it is typically in /Users/<login name>. Note also that it is a hidden file.

  • You will find the following text in the configuration file:

# Scaling factor for printing.  Set to 1.0 for no scaling.  If your printed templates

# measure Y inches instead of X inches, set to X / Y. You may use a formula

# here. Make sure that you use decimal points for numbers (floating point). Example:

# print_scale_factor = 9.5 / (9.5 - 1.0 / 32.0)

print_scale_factor = 1.0

  • Use a known accurate ruler and measure the printed length of the template – it is the distance between the two gray regions. Take that length and divide it by the defined width of the board.  This is your print scale factor.  You don’t need to go beyond 3 decimal points but it is helpful to measure to the closest 1/64”.

An example: If the printed template board measures 4” and it is supposed to be 4 ½”, then 4.5/4 = 1.125.So, you would change the 1.0 to 1.125 like this:

print_scale_factor = 1.125

  • Save the .pyrouterjig file and restart pyRouterJig (i.e. quit and start it again).  Note that you must restart pyRouterJig because it only gets the information from .pyrouterjig when it starts.

  • Open your template, print it and then verify its accuracy.

Note that different papers can stretch by different amounts when put through a printer.  So you need to repeat this if you switch to a different kind of paper. Thicker papers tend to stretch less than thinner ones. In general, you should always verify the correctness of your template before using it.

 

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