Convert aperture cards to digital – Digital Transformation of Microfilm Formats
Aperture Card Scanning Service
High quality aperture card scanning service.
- Greyscale and/or Monochrome Scanning Technology.
Established 2001 with 30 Years Experience Producing and Scanning Microfilm.
Secure, Confidential Service, GDPR ICO Compliant.
High resolution microfilm scanning 200dpi, 300dpi, 400dpi.
Convert Aperture Cards to TIFF/JPEG/PDF/DXF/DWG and PDF Formats.
Bulk scanning and Scan on Demand Services.
Indexing and Cataloguing.
Hollerith Data Reading and Extraction/Punch Card Reading.
- Automatic Indexing Using OCR and AI.
- Ideal Replacement for Broken Aperture Card/Microfilm Reader.
High Quality Greyscale Scanning of Microfilm Aperture Cards
Professional Aperture Card Scanning Services
plan of action
How We
Do It
High-Resolution Digitisation for Legacy Microfilm Cards & Technical Drawings
Are your historical engineering schematics, architectural plans, and utility maps trapped on legacy aperture cards? Relying on obsolete card readers or physical microfilm view-boxes severely limits data access and puts your vital structural heritage at risk of physical deterioration.
Scanning and Data Solutions provides an expert, high-volume aperture card scanning service, converting legacy microform data into crystal-clear, modern digital files.
Operating from our advanced UK scanning bureau, we utilize state-of-the-art greyscale and monochrome imaging technology to capture the finest microscopic details from 35mm film inserts. We transform aging physical cards into high-resolution, completely structured digital assets.
We serve manufacturing, utility, and aerospace engineering clients looking for specialist microform digitisation across the UK.
Unlocking Your Technical Data: Hollerith Code Extraction
The true power of an aperture card lies in how it was originally archived. Most vintage cards feature a series of punched holes across the cardboard mount—known as Hollerith index data.
Automated Metadata Indexing: Our advanced aperture card scanners don’t just capture the image; they are equipped with specialised optical read-heads that automatically read, extract, and decode the physical Hollerith punches.
Zero Manual Data Entry Errors: By extracting this code, we instantly capture critical legacy metadata—such as Drawing Number, Part Number, Sheet Number, Issue Revision, and Description—mapping it perfectly to your digital file names with 100% database accuracy.
Why Digitise Your Aperture Card Library?
CAD-Ready Outputs & Vector Conversion: We convert raw microform images into highly versatile digital formats, including high-resolution TIFF, JPEG, and text-searchable PDFs. We can even provide full CAD conversion, outputting files into DWG or DXF formats to act as clean digital underlays for active engineering workflows.
Advanced Image Enhancement: Microfilm fades, scratches, and degrades over decades. Our scanner captures weak areas—applying automatic de-skewing, background noise reduction, and contrast correction to bring faint pencil lines back to life.
Seamless EDRMS Ingestion: We export complete, structured CSV or XML index logs alongside your images, allowing you to seamlessly mass-import your entire legacy archive straight into Document Management, cloud systems, or internal corporate servers.
Elimate Physical Storage Friction: Reclaim space taken up by specialist metal card index cabinets. A single digital storage network can replace hundreds of thousands of physical cards while allowing multiple engineering teams to access the same schematic simultaneously.
Collection of Aperture Cards
Batch Preparation Barcode Generation
Scanning of Aperture Cads
Indexing of scanned images
Quality Control
File Verification
Encryption
Secure Data Delivery via USB/Cloud/DVD
Secure Document
Disposal & File
Deletion
plan of action
How We
Do It
Collection of documents for scanning for most projects is our own transport and staff. The collection is usally done with existing archive boxes, or archive boxes that we provide. We do not normally charge for the boxes as they are used for many projects once the paper has been securely shredded at the end of the project. Every box is labelled with a unique job and box number. The labels are kept anonymous for security reasons. The vehicle will have enough fuel to come directly back to our office.
Our Aperture Card Scanning Service utilises the latest Wicks and Wilson Aperture Card Scanners to provide exceptional image quality from aperture cards that are often very low contrast and in a poor condition.
We typically scan Aperture Cards at 240dpi, although up to 400dpi is possible. This resolution is at an A0 drawing size, and a A0 is filmed at a 30x reduction, so the true resolution the film is being scanned is thousands of DPI!
The aperture card scanner will output greyscale images, monochrome images or both greyscale and monochrome simultaneously (dual streaming).
Diazo copy cards or positive microfilm are often more challenging, the Wick and Wilson Scanners with the greyscale scanning capabilities help to provide excellent image quality.
Turn around times for your Aperture Card scanning project can be tailored to your requirements.
Some Aperture Cards contain Hollerith Punch indexing, this works much like a Barcode. Our scanners will automatically read this Hollerith Code and can either name the file using it, or output the data to an index file.
Aperture Cards that do not contain Hollerith will need to be indexed either from the details on the Card or directly from the scan of the drawing that has been created.
During the scanning process our operators constantly monitor the images that are being created. Our midrange scanners provide enough time for this process. Random statistical quality controls are also in place to check batches of documents, in the event of a failure, batches being rescanned.
Every project is different. Some require a scanned document to be returned in a Windows folder structure, some will require a separate index file, such as a CSV, Excel, Access database. At this point our processes are designed for the clients specific requirements, the scanned file format, TIFF, PDF, PDF/A, and the formatting of the file names and index formats are produced at this point.
All data is sensitive and our suggestion is that all data should be encrypted to AES 256 standards, whether we are sending the data on a USB, DVD, or via the Cloud.
Once encrypted the data will be returned to you. We have secure cloud services for this, secure mail, or personal delivery. Where a physical delivery is happening, the data will be securely double wrapped.
Data is kept for an agreed amount of time in order for the data to get onto your systems, and become backed up. After this, the data will be securely removed from our already encrypted systems.