Memo About Scanning, Enlarging and Printing Circuit Diagrams in High Resolution

I received my original Beocord 5000 service manual a few days ago. Before I start working on a B&O unit I always like to have all the documentation that is available...just so much more fun that way. I also like the circuit diagrams enlarged on separate sheets. That way one can read the circuit description while looking at the diagrams. Also enlarged is better for markup. Unfortunately most manuals available on the internet are fairly poorly scanned. Today I spent a bit of time trying to get it right. I recently obtained an EPSON 'Perfection V37' photo quality scanner and a 1200dpi Brother HL-2240 printer. Today I experimented a bit with their settings trying to get a perfect reproduction of the two circuit diagrams of the Beocord 5000 manual.

Here is what I ended up with: The scanner is best set to 'Text' (i.e. essentially to "bitmap") and 1200 dpi resolution. The 'image correction setting' needs to be set two notches towards lighter density. This prevents the bleeding of smaller text and numbers, and the resulting scan is very close to the original in appearance and density:

Multipage diagrams need to be reassembled in Photoshop before they can be printed on multiple pages ('tiled') that can be assembled into a large poster-like print of the diagram. Photoshop unfortunately cannot do this, and Illustrator requires a post script printer for high resolution output, which the cheap Brother apparently is not. I was able to work around this using a $4.99 app from the Apple Appstore, called "Mindcad Tiler". In difference to the Adobe products, this app obeys the printer settings, i.e. the HD 1200 dpi mode of the Brother can be used. It also is very easy to use for the tiling process...simply select paper orientation and number of rows and columns of paper sheets, and it scales the PDF file automatically to fit the pages...very nice!

Here is a screen shot of the printer settings that I found to produce the best output:

It is important to select HQ 1200 as resolution and under Advanced/Graphics Quality/ the setting 'text'. Without it the printer will do some dithering and blur the precise quality of the scan.

After the pages printed, a bit of scissoring and Scotch taping produces nice large diagrams in pristine resolution:

O.k....now I am ready to work on the Beocord 5000!