printing crankcase gaskets instead of tracing

[chuckwood]

Somebody in this forum a good while back suggested a method using a factory gasket on a scanner for printing out a gasket pattern on new gasket paper. This is for the situations where the saw is vintage and no more gaskets are available from any vendors or dealers. I placed my one and only new gasket in a scanner and got an exact size tiff format image of the gasket. The I printed the image onto the thin 1/64 inch thick gasket material using an ink jet printer. It worked great. When I superimposed my pattern gasket onto the print on the new gasket material it matched perfectly. This should make things easier and more precise than tracing by hand. The gasket material is just a little thicker than the professional grade photo paper and prints well in an ink jet. Now I can easily print out as many case gaskets that I need. If anybody needs gaskets for the L65's and L77's I can email the image and you can also make your own gaskets with it. This method should work in general for any saw gasket you wish to copy from a new gasket. The image is my new gasket covering the image I printed on Karropak gasket paper I bought on ebay. It matches so well you can't really see the printed image underneath.

 

[kyle.kipple]

Very nice!!!
This has me thinking...
My fiancé cuts vinyl patterns for her crafts and designs she does for a hobby. She uses a cricut machine to cut everything she wants that is linked by wifi to her laptop. I'm curious how well her heavy duty knife would do with gaskets...

 

[67L36Driver]

Provided the part is reasonably flat, I put it on my flatbed scanner and hit 'copy'. I fill the larger cavitys with wadded up white paper towel.
Then take the copy and staple it to the gasket material and cut it out.

Save the scan for later use.

 

[chuckwood]

Provided the part is reasonably flat, I put it on my flatbed scanner and hit 'copy'. I fill the larger cavitys with wadded up white paper towel.
Then take the copy and staple it to the gasket material and cut it out.

Save the scan for later use.

Yeah, I was thinking about placing a crankcase half on my scanner and seeing what would happen, but I was concerned that the dark inside of the image would blur up the lines of the insides of the tanks, etc. That's a great idea putting white stuffing in it that will bounce the light back to get a more crispy image that way.

 

[chuckwood]

Just cut out the gasket with an exacto knife, and found it too tedious to cut out the holes that way. So I got a punch with many different sizes and punched all the holes out with that. Making gaskets is pretty easy now with the right tools.

 

[Jasonrkba]

This is really smart. I'm surprised there is not a database for this. It could be applied to just about anything that uses a gasket.

 

[Pioneer]

You can go one step further: After the scan, turn the image into a dxf file and send it to someone with a laser cutter. I do this for balsa and ply cutting and send the files to a friend when I want absolute precision. A cutter should do gasket material no problem.

 

[ANewSawyer]

I bought one of those punches years ago to do something with. Definitely not add hole to belts and gaskets. but that is what I use it for the most. IIRC, I used the punch to make an axe sheath.

 

[Jasonrkba]

Printing is my day job, sheet and roll fed over 20 years. I'm on vacation this week but when I go back Monday I'm going to bounce some ideas off the Xerox tech. I'll check back in.