Aperture Card Scanning Services in Canada
Trapped on cards. Recovered as drawings.
Digitize Hollerith-format aperture cards with embedded 35mm microfilm chips. Capture the drawing, extract the punch and printed metadata, deliver searchable digital records — all in Canada.
Aperture card scanning is the process of digitizing aperture cards — the Hollerith-format cards with embedded 35mm microfilm chips used heavily through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s to store engineering drawings, blueprints, and other large-format records. It's how organizations recover decades of technical documentation locked in a format that fewer and fewer vendors can still read.
Nimble scans aperture cards on production-grade equipment in our Protected B cleared Canadian facilities, capturing the microfilm chip as a high-resolution digital drawing and extracting the Hollerith punch data and printed metadata from the card itself. Output is delivered as searchable PDFs, TIFFs, or formats matched to your engineering or records systems, with full indexing tied to the data captured from each card.
All work happens in Canada under bonded chain of custody.
Why Aperture Cards Need to Move
Aperture cards were the dominant storage format for engineering drawings across utilities, manufacturing, defence, government infrastructure, and architectural firms for several decades. Each card carries a 35mm microfilm chip — typically a single drawing — and a Hollerith punch pattern (and often printed metadata) identifying the drawing number, revision, project, and other indexing data.
Two problems have caught up with the format. First, the equipment to read aperture cards is essentially out of production; spare parts and trained operators are scarce, and most organizations no longer have working readers in-house. Second, the films themselves face the same degradation issues as other microfilm — vinegar syndrome on acetate stock, image fade over time, and physical damage from decades of handling. Organizations sitting on tens of thousands of aperture cards typically discover the problem when an as-built drawing is needed for a renovation, regulatory submission, or asset sale and can't be retrieved.
Conversion preserves the drawings, captures the Hollerith and printed indexing data, and turns a brittle physical archive into a searchable digital one.
Key Benefits
High-resolution drawing capture — 35mm microfilm chip captured at production-grade resolution suitable for technical and engineering use.
Hollerith data extraction — Punch-card data read and translated into structured metadata, automatically tied to each digitized drawing.
Printed metadata captured — Drawing numbers, revisions, project codes, and titles printed on the card body are captured and indexed.
OCR on title blocks — Text in the captured drawing's title block is OCR'd where readability permits.
Output formats matched to your systems — PDF, TIFF, DWG-compatible formats, or specifications you require.
Damaged and aged cards handled — Specialty handling for warped, brittle, or degraded cards.
Protected B Canadian facilities — All capture, processing, and storage in Canada.
Bonded transport and chain of custody — Documented from your facility to ours.
Disposition your choice — Originals returned, stored, or destroyed with certification.
How It Works
A 4-step flow from intake to delivery.
Inventory & Assessment
We assess the collection — number of cards, condition, indexing requirements, output format. Fixed-price proposal.
Bonded Pickup
Cards are packed and transported under bonded courier with full chain-of-custody documentation.
Production Capture
Each card is scanned: the microfilm chip captured as a high-resolution drawing, the Hollerith punch and printed metadata captured and translated to structured indexing data.
Indexing, OCR & Delivery
Drawings are indexed using the metadata captured from each card. OCR is applied to title blocks where readable. Output is delivered to your engineering systems, document management platform, or the Nimble portal.
Inventory & Assessment
We assess the collection — number of cards, condition, indexing requirements, output format. Fixed-price proposal.
Bonded Pickup
Cards are packed and transported under bonded courier with full chain-of-custody documentation.
Production Capture
Each card is scanned: the microfilm chip captured as a high-resolution drawing, the Hollerith punch and printed metadata captured and translated to structured indexing data.
Indexing, OCR & Delivery
Drawings are indexed using the metadata captured from each card. OCR is applied to title blocks where readable. Output is delivered to your engineering systems, document management platform, or the Nimble portal.
Common Use Cases
Aperture card scanning is used wherever organizations have legacy engineering or technical archives in card format:
Utilities — power, gas, water, and telecom infrastructure drawings; substations, pipelines, distribution networks
Manufacturing — product drawings, tooling designs, plant infrastructure
Defence and military — equipment drawings, infrastructure records, archival technical documentation
Government infrastructure — public works drawings, transportation, building infrastructure
Architecture, engineering, and construction — historical building drawings, civil engineering archives, as-builts
Aerospace — aircraft and component drawings, infrastructure records
Energy — well files, refinery and pipeline drawings, environmental records
How This Differs From...
General document scanning
Most scanning vendors don't have aperture card capability. The format requires specialized capture equipment that combines microfilm imaging with Hollerith data reading — not standard kit even at high-end document scanning operations. Nimble's facilities include this specialty capacity.
Microfilm conversion
Microfilm rolls and aperture cards both involve film capture, but aperture cards add Hollerith and printed metadata that needs to be extracted alongside the image. Conversion of aperture cards is a more involved process per item than rolled microfilm and is priced and planned differently.
Re-drafting drawings in CAD
Some organizations consider re-drafting historical drawings into modern CAD systems. That's an order-of-magnitude more expensive and only justified for drawings that will be actively modified. For preservation, retrieval, and compliance, scanning is the right answer; CAD conversion can be added selectively for drawings that need it.
Compliance & Security
Your data is protected with enterprise-grade security and regulatory compliance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an aperture card?
Why digitize aperture cards now?
What format are the digitized drawings delivered in?
Is the Hollerith data captured?
What about damaged or aged cards?
Where is the work done?
What happens to the original aperture cards?
Are converted drawings legally admissible?
How long does aperture card conversion take?
Can converted drawings be searched?
Is aperture card scanning used by regulated industries?
Ready to recover your aperture card archive?
Book a 20-minute call with our solutions team to walk through your collection — volume, condition, output format — and get a fixed-price plan to convert them in Canada.
Book a Discovery CallWhere This Work Happens
Delivered from three Protected B facilities across Canada
Aperture Card Scanning Services in Canadais performed inside Nimble’s Protected B cleared scanning centres — with bonded pickup nationwide. Choose the centre nearest you, or let us route through the best fit for your project.
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