NOT MIKE BRADY’S BLUEPRINT Advances in Technology Have Made the Traditional Blueprint Obsolete
By CHRIS CZIBORR
Blueprints have come a long way since the 1800s, when a process that depended on bright, sunny skies was used to etch those familiar white lines on light-sensitive blue sheets.
In the 1930s a new process became popular. The “blueprint” became a blue line transparency made with ammonia and “diazo” machines. The big selling point: a quicker, more automated production process. Output im-proved to hundreds of sheets a day from dozens.
tBP/Architecture’s computer-aided drawing: company doesn’t use blueprints (right).
In the past several years, architectural and engineering firms have all but phased out that form of blueprint.
Firms now rely on multicolor plotters and copiers, white bond paper and the Internet.
As recently as the late 1990s, workers had to monotonously feed sheets through a blue line-making diazo machine,all the while getting a buzz from the ammonia fumes.
“Now I’d say about 95% of our clients no longer use diazo machines,” said Chuck Hayes, chief executive of OCB Reprographics Inc., an Irvine graphics reproduction maker that is owned by Glendale-based American Reprographics Inc.
OCB, founded in 1926, has moved from the diazo blue line process to digital plain-paper copies in the past several years.
There are numerous reasons for the shift away from the machines: time, speed, environmental regulations and conditions for workers who had to deal with blueprints.
Because of the ammonia, “the old process didn’t smell very good,” Hayes said.
Companies began moving to more advanced technology around 1997.
By that point architectural and engineering firms already had long since shifted to using computer-aided design programs. And the professionals increasingly had been printing out their designs with in-house plotters or copiers onto white bond paper.
Even existing blueprints now are scanned and then reproduced electronically.
“We don’t use blueprints anymore,” said Jay Malone, director of finance for Newport Beach-based tBP/Architecture. “We scan documents that we want to have copies made of.” He said the automated blueprint process has sped up production.
Brian Arial, a principal in the Newport Beach office of Minneapolis-based KKE Architects Inc., echoed Malone’s observations.
“The current process we use is three to four times as fast,” Arial said. “The quality is a lot better. It’s rare to see a (diazo) machine anymore. In the last five years those have been phased out.”
It’s a long way from the original blueprints. Under the old process, a drawing was first made on tracing paper or cloth. The tracing was placed over the blueprinting paper, which was then put under light. It was then added to a chemical solution, which turned the paper blue, except where the original drawing blocked the light.
In contrast to the blueprint method, preparing a diazo whiteprint starts with drawing a diagram on a translucent sheet.
That sheet is placed on top of whiteprint paper and put through a diazo machine, which express it to ultraviolet light. The whiteprint developed using ammonia gas.
Environmental regulations in recent years curbing the use of ammonia,integral to the diazo process,also have sped up the shift to a more automated process.
“Ammonia is considered a hazardous material,” OCB’s Hayes said. “So city and county agencies are drastically limiting the amount of ammonia that we can store on-site to a level below what is required to produce diazo products.”
Hayes also said there are currently only a couple of manufacturers of diazo products and very few diazo machine repair technicians left.
So “the cost for this material has increased substantially and is expected to continue to rise,” he said.
While the newer processes aren’t cheap, company officials say that the increased automation improves their cost-tracking for production and reproduction.
“In the past it was tough to quantify what we were doing,” said tBP’s Malone.
Labor costs have declined, too, Malone said. In the past, a staff member had to feed sheets through the diazo machine.
“We no longer need someone standing in front of the darn machine,” he said.
Architectural and engineering firms typically will rent or buy plotters and large format copiers from companies such as OCB.
The Internet also has become a big factor in the reproduction business.
“We’re shifting to customers placing their orders over the Internet,” OCB’s Hayes said.
That includes sending the design drawings themselves across the Web.
OCB has a Web-based document management service that shares files between any of parent company American Reprographics’ offices.
Firms typically use their own file transfer protocol sites to share documents.
“We use the sites for electronic transfers of blueprints, including a Hilton project in Las Vegas we worked on,” said Bruce Greenfield, managing director of the Newport Beach office of Alameda-based MBH Architects.
