Dimensionaly accurate large format scanning

So I’d like try and make an ice surface for a bubble hockey hockey game similar to this:
http://chexxmods.com/theice

But hopefully less than $218 and of course with my own graphics.

The challenges I’m seeing here are

  1. Creating an accurate drawing in the PC of this ice surface, including the cut outs.
  2. Figuring out a method of marking, painting, or printing onto a surface similar in texture and durability.
  3. Cutting accurate slots and holes so that the new ice drops into the game perfectly.

The sheet is similar to styrene and is about 1/16 inch thick which means most scanners can’t roll it through… (There are some HP DesignJets that can take like a 1/2inch, but I don’t know anyone with that)

Any ideas on any of these challenges would be appreciated.

Joe

For scanning, what about a camera on the CNC gantry that would let you take a series of photos you could stitch together accurately and lessen lens distortion ?

You could probably also use a high res overhead picture and scale/warp in PS with a good deal of reference dimensions?

For printing, depending on what artwork you want to use, what about screen printing ? It’d be a big screen, but screen material is pretty inexpensive generally speaking and you could make your own frame ? You could also go with printed vinyl, but when I priced that out for mego it was up there in terms of price. Plus application difficulty and durability might suffer.

I had thought about the CNC gantry… that would be a pretty cool project in itself…

What do you think about some sort of large format print on paper that has accurate dimension marks… kind of like AR (Augmented Reality) markers or really just an very even graph paper like known scale where the spacing is well known… taking a picture at height both with just that paper, and then another with the large item to scan (apply the same warping to remove)

I think there is a chance I’m making this too complicated for this particular project, but I have a few others in mind that could benefit from this as well.

It’s been since 7th grade that I messed at all with silk screening, how hard is making the screens?

What about something like the tape that the Shaper Origin uses? Lens distortion should be pretty predictable/removable with enough fiducials. A full printed graph paper like sheet should certainly work, but you could likely get away with much less.

Lens distortion should be able to be mathematically removed knowing the lens parameters, sensor size, etc. the fiducials would help confirm that was done correctly and then figure out scale. Photoshop has presets for some camera and lens combinations.

I think I might have to try the camera mounted to the CNC gantry. Whip up some gcode that can trigger the camera shutter, and away we go. Seems like that might be a great way to create ultra high resolution scans if the stitching is done well.