Hello friends! My name is Erik and I am the CNC operator for a countertop company in Florida. I am posting to see if any of you are in the stone business and use a template digitizer of any form. Currently we are using E-Template(http://www.etemplatesystem.com/) but I'm finding it overly time consuming and accuracy has been an issue as well. What I'm wondering is if any of you have constructed a digitizer (DIY) similar to this product (http://nemi.com/digitizer.htm) OR have any ideas on how one could construct such a device. I imagine building the table itself would be easy, but the software is where I get confused. Perhaps I can purchase software? Please let me know your thoughts or questions you might have. The table itself would need to be about 14' x 6' to accomadate a kitchen countertop template.

Thanks a ton guys,
Erik@artisan-stoneworks.com

I could envision a easy 2D digitizer using a sight glass and a couple of encoders or even a usb camera. The software should not be to complicated, the biggest issue would be getting the data into the computer, but a pulse train from an encoder should be doable on a parallel port. There are lots of digital interfaces available that would do much better.

So you want to digitize because you're going to someone's house or business and taking a template of the profile needed?

Can you cut 14' X 6'? If you can then there is probably software available that will allow you to take the encoder feedback from your existing system using a stylus in place of your cutter.

Send an e-mail to support@deskam.com with all of you questions. They have many different ways of scanning and digitizing, you should find them helpful. Alternatively you could try e-mailing dmauch@seanet.com, I was talking to him a while ago and he was testing a scanning system at the time.