Placement of book in the cradle

[bimbo111]

So i've scanned a few books with my hackerspace scanner. I have a problem though. I don't know if this has been discussed before, but i haven't been able to find anything about it.

How do you place the book correct in the cradle? If i measure up the book in the cradle, so that each wing fits tight like in (1) on my illustration i get the situation like (2) in my illustration. In (2) the book will not be aligned with the glass platten and i have a gap around the edge of the left side. I've tried to avoid this by sticking in stuff under the left side of the hard cover, but it just don't seem right. Furthermore, when you get to a certain point in the book, you will need to rearrange this, when to book finaly accepts to lie flat on the back. Then the same situation shows up again in the end of the book.

The problem is, that it's just so time consuming to rearrange the book (also because you need do the software part in a seperate step for each time you rearrange). I tried to solve the problem by taping the to hardback covers to the platen, but then i simply couldn't open the book enough like in (3) in the illustration. I'm scanning books around 2" wide.

I feel that i missed some point somewhere. Also i never got the trick with the routed line in the middle of the bottom piece?

Any suggestions?

[dpc]

It's a known problem and there have been discussions on how to deal with this in the forums over the last year or two.

Solutions can be as simple as using different diameter dowel rods under the book spine to the more intricate designs that jck47 has come up with for self-centering cradles (his latest design is in this recent thread: http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... 6&start=10).

[daniel_reetz]

DPC is right, with certain books this is trouble and it's why there is slot in the middle of your cradle base. Sometimes putting something in there fixes it entirely.