Two page turning mechanisms

[rob]

No, I didn't build these or try these out. But they have been patented by Xerox, one in 1987, and one in 1997. And as long as you don't sell machines with the mechanism in the 1997 patent (due to expire in , you can build from it.

Page Flipper for Book Copying (4,663,873) filed Dec 20, 1985, issued May 12, 1987, expired Dec 20, 2005. Describes a rubbery pickup roller, an "air-knife" used to fluff up the pages for the pickup roller, and little fingers that hold the pages down while the platen is not on top of the book.

Bound Document Imager with Page Turner (5,640,252) filed Dec 12, 1995, issued Jun 17, 1997, expires Dec 12, 2015. This one probably looks familiar to some of you. Instead of a pickup roller, it uses a vacuum arm, and also the "air-knife".

The mechanisms seem simple enough, and since we're not Xerox, we don't have to build them to commercial standards. Anyone up for some garage-engineering?

[Afish]

The first page turning system, if you put an angle on the book cradle, with some imagination could turn into an automatic page turning no glass book scanner.

[daniel_reetz]

I really think that printers are the best paper-handling devices out there. And in fact, in my IBM InfoPrint 1125, there is a mechanism that looks very similar to the roller in one of those patents.

The idea of this thing is that it automatically presses on the stack of paper with the correct force to move it... by moving it. It's kind of a weird thing, but I'd bet that with some fooling around you could get a damned fine page turner going on.

Attaching a bunch of pics here. I think I have 4 of these, from add-ons and disassembled printers.

[StevePoling]

Dan, I think that you're onto something reverse-engineering printers. Any page-turner will have to lift a single page and that job is done by nothing as reliably as a printer. And printers are virtually given away by manufacturers who make their money on ink cartridges.

Once that page is lifted, it must somehow be conveyed to the other side of the book cradle. I wonder whether electrostatics typically found in a Xerographic/laser printer can be used to apply complimentary charges to left and right pages, then use printer paper handling stuff to lift the right page, and a pulse of air to get the right page moving in the correct direction. Once it gets close enough, the static charge finishes the job of sticking the page to the left side. And it'll stay stuck for a second or so until the charge dissipates.

The high voltages needed to electro-charge the pages is probably not the safest thing to play with. But you young folk don't have TV tubes to knock you on your butts and half-kill you like we had back in my day.

[daniel_reetz]

I've been having all sorts of rube-goldberg ideas to get this going, it's kind of a fun thought. I wish I could get my friend Lyle in on it, he's a controls engineer and knows how to automate electronics well.

Wonder what would be a good air-puff source for the air-knife? I like air a lot better than static, so much more controllable and less scary. I'm thinking of some kind of mini-bellows, that would be mashed by a servo.

One of the cool things about a page turner is that it can be really slow, because after all, I don't care if it takes a machine a whole week to digitize a book, as long as I don't have to supervise the damned thing.

[Afish]

The following PDF describes every possible way to separate currency titled "Design and Analysis of a Bulk Note Feeding Device". You might have to do a "Save Target as" on the link to get the PDF.

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/ ... sequence=1

[Turtle]

One of the cool things about a page turner is that it can be really slow, because after all, I don't care if it takes a machine a whole week to digitize a book, as long as I don't have to supervise the damned thing.

That's a brilliant way of looking at it... and hopefully it won't jam when you're not there.

The downside of auto page turner is that it doesn't know if it's ripping (as in tearing) a page, picking up two pages or not picking up any pages at all. You might have to go thru each files to find the errors..and may take about 30 minutes. That's why there are always somebody babysitting the commercial auto page turners and some machines will actually need manually help with all the pages like this old one from 2004 http://www.archive.org/details/scanning_robot . I realize that I can do pages by hand in about 18 minutes for a 500 page book, that's including stopping once in a while upon errors.

On the other hand, If your paying someone $0.10 to turn pages in the US or $0.05 in China, it makes sense to have a page turner.

[rob]

I've been having all sorts of rube-goldberg ideas to get this going, it's kind of a fun thought. I wish I could get my friend Lyle in on it, he's a controls engineer and knows how to automate electronics well.

I was hoping to inspire someone, even if it was just tinkering!

Wonder what would be a good air-puff source for the air-knife? I like air a lot better than static, so much more controllable and less scary. I'm thinking of some kind of mini-bellows, that would be mashed by a servo.

My thought was a muffin (i.e. cooling) fan that could be turned on and off, with the fan blowing into a tube.

--Rob

[rob]

The downside of auto page turner is that it doesn't know if it's ripping (as in tearing) a page, picking up two pages or not picking up any pages at all. You might have to go thru each files to find the errors..and may take about 30 minutes. That's why there are always somebody babysitting the commercial auto page turners...

That's my thought. I am willing to sit around and watch the machine work, noting which pages have to be done over. Hopefully my eyes won't glaze over Also, this is certainly not meant for fragile books!

Also, watching the page turner go may give more ideas on how to improve upon it.

--Rob

[Afish]

I think I have a design that might work or at least be the beginnings of a workable design. The beauty of it is that it it's simplicity and can be retrofitted to any platen that goes up and down. How do I upload a scanned picture of my drawings to post here?