Hello all: I'm sure many of you use the fotocopier as an indespensable tool in designing your sundials. One of its most useful features is its ability to make reductions or enlargements. For example, if you want to reproduce a dial face drawing using a different size gnomon, it is sometimes easier to simply change the setting on the fotocopier than to re-calculate all the lines.
But beware! I found out a while back that most copiers will not reproduce a copy to the exact size that you program it to do. Yesterday, I showed the surprised manager of Kinko's (a respected fotocopy shop) that when we fotocopied a 16" ruler at 100 %, the copy measured 15 3/4" !!! We then checked five different machines and none of them produced same-size copies (except for a small digital copier). This error (99% to 102%) may seem small, but can be very significant for work on larger dials. The best thing to do would be to always check the final copy size to make sure it is correct. The manager and I wondered if the machines could be calibrated and if they are covered by the Bureau of standards? By the way, did you know that different brands of rulers measure differently!? Be careful with those. (I always use the same architectural ruler to avoid problems.) John Carmichael http://www.azstarnet.com/~pappas
