STAEDTLER 661 A3 Mars Drawing Board for Technical Drawing - DIN A3 (52 x 37.8 x 23cm)

This review is for the "STAEDTLER 661 A3 Mars Drawing Board for Technical Drawing - DIN A3 (52 x 37.8 x 23cm)", for which I paid £76.34. I love this! It works perfectly, and stores away nicely when not in use. Excellent quality with smooth operation and accuracy. I bought the STAEDTLER LR 661 13 storage bag. The box the board came in fits in the bag and the board in the box. So it is portable and protected. I also bought the add-on STAEDTLER 660 20 Mars Drafting Head which also works well when needed, but I mostly just use a triangle instead.

as others have said, if you use A3 size paper you will loose drawing area where it is clamped; I find it better to cut a larger paper size to allow for margins if I actually want a full A3 size drawing - the board is big enough to allow for this although you will tend to go off the vertical scale, so a calibrated set square is advisable well pleased and I agree with previous reviewer who said not to bother with the optional head - I use said fixed set square together with an adjustable one, much easier for me, anyway ( and if you are careful you could try taping A3 with magic tape [not sellotape] rather than use the clamps)

Perfect for A3 drawing with size that makes sense and can be used anywhere. Would recommend a separate 45 degree adjustable set square, of the smaller size, as a practical addition.

Fab quality, but it was not cheap so should have been for the price. Good finish and iv used many times for my course drawing

It's plastic and not the most robust drawing equipment I've ever used but you can produce quite high quality drawing on it. Given the price, it is a good product for an engineering student.

Having never used a drawing board before, this was my first purchase. My initial concern was how the ruler lapped over the edge (as shown in the picture) however upon receipt I found the ruler lifted off and you could use it on both edges of the board - landscape or portrait. Happy days! It was great for detail and alignment. My drawings have turned out very well and I'm extremely happy with my purchase. I highly recommend.

Solid piece of kit, does the job well. You may or may not find the marking origins to your liking (they're based on the full page, not the part visible outside the clamps). Note that you can turn the ruler vertically and run it in the bottom tracks reasonably well.

It's fairly sturdy for the size and the price, but you will always have to lock down the ruler if you really want to get a straight line, otherwise it has some play. The locking down mechanism for the paper is ok but it it has a bit of slope as it comes to the bottom and to the left (where the locks are), so if you want to do some lines there (for example the bounding border for an A3 draft) you will need to hold the pen really perpendicular to the board. Another annoying thing is that when you lock the paper you don't really know how much paper you have under the left lock. If you lock and A3 at the 43cm mark on the right side you won't know exactly how much paper you have under the lock, it could use some transparent plastic or something like that. Don't bother to buy the Staedtler Mars 660 20 Drafting Head, it's just way to inaccurate and clumsy and it eats up half of your board.

I bought this item along with his drafting head and the soft case and I can say that my 12 years old son is absolutely fascinated about it. Right out of the box he could make his first basic technical drawing like he saw on his youtube tutorials. WOW!!!!! From what I saw while he using it, the locking mechanism is a little bit stiff out of the box, but after few locks it is normal. The red / green semaphore is intuitive and just fun to watch. 100% the parallelism is repeatable, even without locking, I saw this and is amazing, I did not expect from a plastic item to be so precise. You can use this board with A3 and A4 paper. With A4 you must pay attention with the sliding ruler when you return from outside of the paper. Otherwise the long clip is just perfect. I will buy also some A3 paper, but A4 is also good. The plastic is top quality, every engraving is sharp. The color scheme is beautiful and easy to see: deep blue, dark gray and milky white. I bought for him other Staedtler products in time, including the Mars 555 compass and I can say it's a formula 1 on geometry. He is using it like a pro also. At 53 Euro I don't regret a cent when it comes to my son and I think for school or for hobby in general this is a good, top quality item. In my opinion and I am outside of the problem, it is not my field, maybe Staedtler could invent some additional legs to tilt the board a little, otherwise I saw that on a normal horizontal table the position of my kid is a little bit uncomfortable or he is a little bit to small for it - I don't know :)) Anyway in conclusion, if he is happy, I am happy and this item deserves 5 stars!

Wie von Staedtler erwartet höchste Qualität. Kein verrutschen und saubere Linien, anders als so manche Platten die ich schon ausprobieren durfte.

La qualité Staedler… je l’avais quand j’ai fait mes études, il y a fort lointain, je trouvais le produit déjà très qualitatif. Rien n’a changé! Trop classe de retrouver cette table à dessin! Merci pour l’envoi rapide!

عملية جدا وسعرها مناسب

Çok hoşuma gitti..resim,özellikle de perspektif resim ve mimari çizimler için kullanıyorum..portre yada benzeri resim taslakları için ızgaralama yapımında/ölçeklemede çok işime yarıyor