60Ticks Sheet Metal Scanner: turn a photo into a cut-ready DXF file

Promotional illustration. The program's graphical user interface differs from the image above. No hardware is included — the camera, stand, backlit scanning bed and computer shown are not part of the purchase.

Turn a photo into a cut-ready DXF file — in minutes.

Sheet Metal Scanner turns a camera and a backlit scanning bed into a fast reverse-engineering tool for flat parts. No camera or scanning bed? It also works directly on image files like JPG, PNG, and BMP.

Download Free Trial Buy Full Version — $49.99

Your first 50 scans are free. No credit card needed to try it.
New in version 2.0: grid calibration, clean DXF output and a full user manual.

Sheet Metal Scanner

Snap a photo and the software finds every edge and hole, then exports a DXF with a cleaned-up copy of the part — true circles, straight sides, sharp corners — ready for your plasma table, laser, or waterjet.

Duplicate a part you don't have a drawing for

Quick prototyping and one-off fabrication

Digitize brackets, plates, gaskets, and complex artwork

Great for home shops and small fab shops running plasma, laser, or waterjet CNC

Convert logos, clip art, or silhouette images into cut-ready DXF files — no scanning setup needed

How it works

New to scanning parts? Read the step-by-step guide: How to turn a photo of a part into an accurate DXF — setup, calibration, lighting, and the shop tip that fixes most reflection problems.

1. Place your part on a backlit bed and snap a photo (or open an image file instead)

2. The software finds the part's edges and holes automatically

3. Export a DXF with two copies: the raw scan, and a cleaned-up copy with true circles, straight sides and sharp corners

4. Open it in your CAD/CAM software, check a dimension, and cut

Honest heads-up on accuracy: this isn't a $10,000 CMM system. With the grid calibration (one photo of a drilled or cut hole plate the software designs for you), expect about ±1/64" (±0.016") across the area the plate covers. With the simple scale-only calibration, expect more like ±0.05" across a full bed, better near the middle. Results depend on your camera, lighting and how flat the part lies — great for prototyping and duplicating parts, not built for aerospace-tight tolerances. Try your free scans and judge for yourself.

What's included

Grid calibration — corrects lens distortion, camera tilt and scale from one photo

Automatic part-thickness correction and sub-pixel edge accuracy

Clean DXF output: true circles, straight sides, sharp corners, layers per part

Auto Adjust for backlit, white or black backgrounds, plus saved camera settings

Named presets — save your dialed-in settings per material/thickness

Also works on JPG, PNG, BMP, and other image files

Illustrated user manual — read it before you buy (PDF)

$49.99 — one-time purchase, unlocks unlimited scanning forever. No subscription, no per-scan fees, ever.

Download Free Trial Buy Full Version

Requires Windows 10/11, a USB webcam or machine vision camera, and a backlit scanning surface (a light table or acrylic bed lit from behind works great, but a plain white background such as a sheet of large paper works too).

Current version 2.0, digitally signed by Clinton Smart. The download includes the User Manual and a Quick Start guide (PDF).

Why I built it

I’ve spent a lot of hours with graph paper, calipers and cardboard templates, making parts for people who figure they can hand me a cardboard cutout, wait ten minutes, and leave with a sheet metal or plate steel part. It rarely works that way — most of these parts have complex curves, odd angles and features that are hard to measure.

I’d always used a flatbed scanner or a camera to help, but a camera’s scale was never close, and on a flatbed the X and Y scales never seemed to match.

So I thought: what if the camera never moved? Then software could correct everything the camera gets wrong, lens distortion included. And if we lit the table from underneath, we’d get a clean silhouette — no fighting reflections off stainless or shadows along the edges. That became Sheet Metal Scanner, with plenty of adjustments built in to help you get a usable scan.

— Clint, MEC Manufacturing · More about us

Questions or ideas?

Ask a question, suggest a feature, or tell us what isn’t working.

Why a form? Because the minute we post our email address, the spam bots find it too. Here’s the deal: a real person (me) answers as soon as I can, and after that we leave you alone unless you ask for more. Give it a try.