How to scan an object to scale?

[woox]

Hi

First off I amtrying to create a create an acurate scan of a flexible keyboard and create a custom computer keyboard from it.

Basically I am trying to create proper keys for the TAB, SPACE, ESC, ALT, CNTRL, (QWERTY KEYS).

I want to SCAN the image in from a scanner and just draw boxes around it in Adobe Illustrator and have the CNC go cut the right sizes out, but when ever I try to scan I can never scan it to the proper scale of the actual item, its always huge and really high res ( i tried lowering it).

How can I scan a image to scale (scale meaning the size of it in reallife). A 0.5x0.5 " key would scan to like 3"x3"

[idgeek]

I do something like this quite often too..(model cars)

What I do is I use multiple sources like scanner, camera and most usefully, contour gauge.

But something like a key board button, I'd just measure it.

and another thing... I believe it scans 1:1 anyways.. on AI(and Photoshop) it just look bigger 'cause of the high resoultion.

have u try printing the scanned image? does it still print big?

[dustin1706]

I don't use illustrator myself, but If your key is .5^2 and your pic comes out to 3^2. just select the image and reduce its size to .1666667% Leave the resolution high.

I am assuming that you are printing the scanned image at 100% before measuring and not measuring on your monitor?

As long as the dimensions are right you should be able to scale it in adobe, or in your cad/cam software. It would probably be easier to draw the boxes accurately at the bigger size anyway?