DIY Book Scanner

Demo of a working prototype I designed to convert rotary motion to linear plus rotary motion. This version has a longer servo arm than what I really need but it shows how the device works. A screw stop limits the travel of the horizontal slide. A counter weight or spring would help the servo lift the weight. I claim this idea as original and disclose it to the public so anybody can use it freely.

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Having trouble with Java again. Here's the video:

Improved prototype. Shorter radius on servo arm, etc. It's my original idea but anybody can use it.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/6Aemhkw2EvE[/youtube]

Very cool! Will that be used to enhance your previous full prototype with one presser at the top and one at the bottom?

What is your view on the advantages/drawbacks of such pressers compared to a top down glass platen? I imagine these points
+ less weight, so smaller servos/motors needed
+ less distance to travel, so faster operation
- won't work with books with content on the entire page (no or very small margins)
- leaves more page curvation than a pressed glass platen does (?)
- their position must be set for each new book (right?)

dtic wrote:Very cool! Will that be used to enhance your previous full prototype with one presser at the top and one at the bottom?

Thanks, brother. Yeah this design is supposed to replace the old pressers.

dtic wrote:
What is your view on the advantages/drawbacks of such pressers compared to a top down glass platen? I imagine these points
+ less weight, so smaller servos/motors needed
+ less distance to travel, so faster operation
- won't work with books with content on the entire page (no or very small margins)
- leaves more page curvation than a pressed glass platen does (?)
- their position must be set for each new book (right?)

Foremost, I like the two pressers vs. glass platen because I want to hold the other side of the page as I lift the corner. Hopefully, this new design won't bulge the pages so badly because the pressers hit the pages vertically instead of at an angle like the old design. I may even adjust the presser to hit the pages on an angle so that the page is pulled taut as the pressers come down. (If that makes sense.)

Yeah, every book requires a reset of adjustment but I think that would be necessary even with a glass platen though maybe not as much.

Thanks for the comments.

jck57 wrote:Hopefully, this new design won't bulge the pages so badly because the pressers hit the pages vertically instead of at an angle like the old design. I may even adjust the presser to hit the pages on an angle so that the page is pulled taut as the pressers come down.

That makes sense.

Another thought I got now was that it may be possible to make use of the pressers in page trimming for books with white margins. If each presser had some highly visible marking, e.g. a line of big black dots, then maybe a some software could autocrop the image height to only get the content in between those markings.