The “soft cradle” single camera bookscanner.

[kusnick]

Hi folks. After a lot of tests (permanent tests anyway), I’m going to share with you an approach for a single camera bookscanner with a “soft cradle” system.
I call it the SC TYPE 1

The main problem to use a single flat platen and just one camera for bookscanning is to press the book wide opened against the glass.
So talking to some friends about this thing one come with the idea “why not to use a piece of foam?”. Cool, but soon we discovered that a regular foam is unable to deform uniformly behind the book, particularly when you have fell pages at one side an a lot at the other side. Trying different things I testes this “memory foam pillow” that has some interesting deformation characteristics.
Look what happens when I press an opened book against the pillow.

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The foam deforms in such a way that will accommodate the book during the page turning from the beginning to the end.

Next step was to build a box to accommodate the pillow

sc003.jpg (61.16 KiB) Viewed 2003 times

And a support with rails for the camera mechanism

sc005.jpg (66.47 KiB) Viewed 2003 times

Here we have the camera mounted on its support with a mechanical trigger system.

sc004.jpg (75.6 KiB) Viewed 2003 times

Of course the illumination is always a concern (and a big problem)… I placed the 5 FCL’s around the platen in a way to avoid reflex.

The set looked like this. Now the thing was dismantled because I’m building a more “permanent” prototype.

sc006.jpg (133.86 KiB) Viewed 2003 times

I thing that the main virtue of this approach is its ready-to-go capability. Its so simple and with minimum moving parts that you won’t think twice to scan few pages or even only one. By the way some binding system are difficult to open with this kind of platen, requiring our old friend the V platen approach. Anyway it may work for 80% of the cases making the job easier.
Post processing in some cases (when you don’t care to have the two pages of the book on a single image for example) was considerably faster.
I helping some people with a archive digitalization and our plan is to use for “soft cradle” books scanners and one with V platen.
As my experimentation progress I’ll try to keep you informed. Maybe somebody even dare to made one of this, if so don’t hesitate to ask.
Cheers,
Marcos Kusnick

[jck57]

Nice work, Marcos! I imagine a version of this design would be ideal for a compact, lightweight, portable single-camera scanner.

[kusnick]

Thanks. I think it can be made simpler for a portable version. Maybe using a single adjustable up and down arm that places the camera on the centre of platen. This arm could be foldable and with a handle and a lock to the platen you may carry the equipment like a suitcase….

[jck57]

Thanks. I think it can be made simpler for a portable version. Maybe using a single adjustable up and down arm that places the camera on the centre of platen. This arm could be foldable and with a handle and a lock to the platen you may carry the equipment like a suitcase….

Right.

[kusnick]

Cool. That’s an Idea! I believe that this approach may open a way to several experiments .

[daniel_reetz]

I'm pretty impressed with this whole thing, Marcus! I really like your "Camera trolley" on top as well. Does the memory foam stay relatively depressed when you lift the glass to take a picture of the page?

There have been similar attempts here over time... one was Will1384: http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/vie ... emory+foam ... looks like we are evolving a new breed of scanner. Very cool creative work.

[kusnick]

This memory foam is quite resilient… so it tends to back to fleetness as soon as you lift the glass, but it is so soft that you really don’t need to use a lot of strength to press the platen against the book. I can digitalize a book without became very tired
Ah, I’m using a 6mm glass as platen. I guess it’s a good thickness because a thinner one could fragile and a thicker one too heavy.