Conn & more engineering spec sheet free-for-all
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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BqTvh7RmRAXFfp3r60yVpTWDYBpFQ9-r contains a giant collection of scans and photographs of engineering vellum sheets from none other than C. G. Conn Ltd. - sadly only a fraction of the ones ever produced/used, but still useful.
They were scanned on loan from a former UMI employee, hence the Benge/King bits, and there are a few hundred more that are too large for standard tabletop scanners that we're working on...
Why are they usually PDFs? Client wanted PDFs. I redid several as PNG or bitmap at different resolutions where potentially useful.It's a free-for-all because there is virtually no organization. Google has been performing optical character recognition every time something is uploaded, so if using a Google account, you should be able to search by topic/name/etc. Not perfect, but helpful somewhat.
The folders and subfolders are references to what each container had, so the Black Crate had hanging folders corresponding to sheet numbers, or the Market Day bag had a bunch of loose sheets presented in order, etc."Fun" items include official dates when certain designs were discontinued, a trombone date code table, 16A designs from the 1960s that were shelved, subcontracted to Yamaha as the 19A/21A, then became the 16A in 1974, a 25A/25B "Director" which was basically a 77B parts-horn, various Navy compass parts from WW2, a possible Czech spy sending stuff to Amati-Kraslice [kidding about that]...
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@ConnDirectorFan That's very cool, has anything more happened to this initiative?
Since there are a lot of duplicates photos, I assume some manual checking and removing of redundancies could be useful, as would categorizing/systemizing the scans further.
Yamaha YTR-8335G
Monke Bb trumpet
Carol Brass flugelhorn
YTR-6810 piccolo
Burbank Eb/D
Various antique cornets & horns in various keys -
@Jolter said in Conn & more engineering spec sheet free-for-all:
@ConnDirectorFan That's very cool, has anything more happened to this initiative?
Since there are a lot of duplicates photos, I assume some manual checking and removing of redundancies could be useful, as would categorizing/systemizing the scans further.
In short, yes, though unfortunately not in a meaningful way. Part of it is my ineptitude, part of it is general coordination difficulty, but it will slowly proceed!
I wish it could have more happening! Just like the collection, it's a mess of fits and starts.
Currently I'm waiting on getting larger size prints - the client/owner dropped off a stack of B/C/D-size prints at a local print shop, who claimed they could scan them. Turns out they did absolutely nothing, while I put together an easel of sorts to photograph them. We're all busy otherwise, so coordination has been difficult.Sorting would definitely be useful. The original objective was "digitize everything so it's not just these fragile sheets", so meaningful organization took a back-seat. Other prints have artifacts due to the scanner [like the wretched RGB-banding when scanning black when in color mode, etc.] so I scanned them in different modes.
Due to the naming convention, often several unique sheets have identical filenames [!!!] since I copied the folder structure of the physical crates themselves...errors and all. When scanning, the new directory caused the app to reset the file name.Because the client/materials-owner wanted tuba and trombone parts primarily, I basically started entering model numbers into Google Drive, then grabbing the results and downloading. Then terms like "tuba", etc.
I suppose a detailed combing with a script, or even a tool like Agent Ransack or Tenorshare to find true duplicates would be in order. I scanned some items multiple times to ensure everything was captured [due to the consumer-grade flatbed scanner], and would potentially want to stitch them into a single sheet-file.
We wanted to use these to create 3D models of each part in modern software, and this could theoretically be automated given the specs and general shape.
