Scanty's DIY Book Scanner Project

A place to tell us about your work and projects. Self-links encouraged!

Moderator: peterZ

Post Reply
User avatar
Scanty
Posts: 2
Joined: 01 Feb 2017, 16:52
E-book readers owned: Ipad, PC with monitor on mobile arm
Number of books owned: 80000
Country: netherlands

Scanty's DIY Book Scanner Project

Post by Scanty »

Seems a good idea to start this thread from the very start.

And I want to start with a question.

If I have the blueprints, plans of the Archivist Quill Book Scanner.
I also discovered this service: 3D printing services in Utrecht.
So producing the bookscanner could be done there. Developed Hackerspace is not really closeby. While these hubs are.

Looking at all the available materials one can use. I wonder if anyone looked into 3d printing the whole thing.
Material wise it looks doable. Only converting plans to the output needed looks difficult and I have no inkling on the costs
involved.
Anyone has any experience with this? Or insight in the costs involved with 3d printing?
duerig
Posts: 388
Joined: 01 Jun 2014, 17:04
Number of books owned: 1000
Country: United States of America

Re: Scanty's DIY Book Scanner Project

Post by duerig »

If you haven't already, it might be a good idea to read through Daniel's write-up of his plans for the Archivist:

https://diybookscanner.org/archivist

The Archivist and Archivist Quill are different book scanner designs, though they have a lot of similarities.

The tricky thing about building book scanners out of 3D printed parts is the scale. These bookscanners are large pieces of furniture.

The Archivist is made of large and heavy pieces of plywood. Most of the pieces would not fit inside a 3D printer. The best way to make the pieces is typically to use a CNC Router or laser cutter. I am certain that there are places near you that provide these services.

On the other hand, the Archivist Quill is made of aluminum beams and steel or plastic brackets. The longest of the aluminum beams is more than 800mm, which is too big to 3d print. So I think you'd still want to use aluminum for the frame. But the brackets that connect everything could be 3d printed. The trick would be to make sure that you make the brackets much thicker than the steel plates. 3D printing most of the plastic brackets would be very easy as well. If you do this, you could have a very sturdy scanner.

There is a lot of promise in 3D printing for book scanners. But I think to take full advantage, you might have to change the design significantly. A while back, somebody posted plans and photos of a 3D printed book scanner they designed but it was a very different design than the Archivist:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3279&p=20006

-Jonathon Duerig
Post Reply