Widelyunknown's DIY Kit v0.9.10 Build

[Widelyunknown]

Hi everyone,

I purchased a DIY kit from Rob and have assembled it. Dealing with Rob as awesome. I have no idea how he as able to nicely fit all the parts into the box. I started at 9pm tonight and got this far in under 3 hours. I would have had the platen together but I bought the wrong size L-brackets. Tomorrow I'll post some pictures I took during the process and I'll post some notes about assembly. The instructions were great. There are a couple of ideas I have for assembly, just ways of doing the same thing a little differently.

The parts list is a little different from the one included in the instructions. Not vastly different by any means, but something to be knowledgable about.

Other than that I'm pretty pumped, and a little tired. More tomorrow.

[rob]

Wow, that is a really good job! So please let us know what the differences in parts list were -- and which was correct, the assembly manual or the google doc?

I'm giving some serious thought to including a set of L-brackets because I had the worst time trying to find correct-sized brackets.

[Widelyunknown]

Just looking at my previous post, the three hours does not include painting. I think it was thinkJason who mentioned most likely needing 3 cans of paint. I bought three and it worked out pretty well. I did paint everything, but that just comes down to personal preference. I think including L-brackets would be a good idea, I was unable to find the right ones so far, but I haven't looked online.

The assembly instructions were awesome. Well laid out and well thought. I was able to churn through assembly in a just over a couple hours. There were a just a couple of things, but I would expect that with a work in progress. Pg 6 shows a outer pulley half and inner pulley half, but I received solid pulleys (or Rob put them together for me .

Discrepancies between the parts list and the assembly instructions:
Parts list
~50 drywall screws, assembly instructions had 26
20 2" bolts, assembly instructions had 14
6 2 1/2" bolts, assembly instructions had 4
20 nuts, assembly instructions 25
20 washers, assembly instructions had 18

The parts list, while containing more pieces, is more thorough. There is a wealth of info in there. It also lists somethings that the assembly instructions didn't such as the halogen light bulbs, light shades, countersink bit, drill bit and correct size of the glass. The best part by far is the listing of part #s for these various parts. I was able to walk into Home Depot and get almost everything in one shot. More than a couple times I was told they didn't carry what I was looking for, only for me to bust out the SKU number and then have them locate it for me. I tried to edit the parts list to add the SKu number for the threaded rod, by my excel skills are lacking (something I should get on).

I was kind of rethinking the mounting of the glass plates. I like the use of L-brackets but these were some thoughts I had. Let me know what you guys think as I didn't design the kit and hence could be missing the thoughts behind the design. I'm thinking about drilling holes in the front and rear plate above the notch for the L-brackets. This way I could slide a bolt in from the inside of the scanner and secure the L-bracket with a wing-nut. This would allow for easy and repeatable adjustment. The issue I see is possible light reflection, but if it wasn't solved with flat black paint I could always just use black felt or something. I saw the felt pads as a way of holding the glass. I've seen before little rubber pieces that are sticky on one side that I think would grip the glass better, but that's not to say that the felt pad is a bad route. I haven't mounted the platen yet (no L-brackets) but when I do it will be with the felt pads and then I'll go from there.

Pg 18 of the Assembly Instructions shows the small and large lever arms and how to install the bearings. It was a very tight fit. I remember from years of skating that if you dent the shield that resides between the two bearing races, you could very well permanently damage the bearing. I installed them a little differently. I used one of the bolts, two washers and a nut and created kind of a screw press to pull them together.



And then using a adjustable wrench and a ratchet, i just tightened until they were in place. You wanna make sure that the bearings are positioned directly over the holes. It will feel really tight as your wrenching but keep going until it stops. You'll notice the difference.


The other thing I did when mounting the cradle wings and angles to the cradle platform was to put the cradle platform on top of the large/small braces before pushing down. The bearings that mount to the cradle platform are secured by screws and if you push down hard enough you could bend/pull the screw out. I found that the cradle angles (as called in the assembly instructions) were a tight fit and giving it a little elbow grease was necessary to get it to fit.


And that's where I'm at now. I have a bachelor party in Colorado this weekend so I won't be getting it completely functional till next week, but the goal is to be able to process a book by Wednesday. I'm not going to go the cable actuated camera route. I'm going to make the USB battery-less remote as detailed at http://www.sakeoftruth.com/2010/04/usb- ... ject-pt-1/

Let me know if you guys have any questions or suggestions.

Will.

[rob]

Thanks, Will, that's some excellent feedback. As for the bearings... I don't like the current way that the bearings work, and we're working on a way to use only one bearing that doesn't have to be so tight!

The L-brackets can be found at McMaster, the assembly manual has the part number.

[Widelyunknown]

I decided to change the mounting system for the platen. It's just simply the bolt and wing nut system that i had mentioned earlier. I drilled from the inside out on the front and rear plate. i did it this way because i wanted nice clean holes on the insides as I was only going to have a bolt head and no washer. I was using a pretty gnarly drill bit (3/16") so when the bit came out of the front it peel some wood away. It wasn't pretty but it'll be under the L-bracket so I wasn't worried.

The back side.


The front. You can kind of see where the wood chipped off. I repainted to keep it nice looking.


I also painted the bolt heads. I don't know if it's necessary, but...... why not? crappy cell phone pic.


The holes are close to the edge which can be a little iffy if the holes aren't drilled straight. This is what it looks like with a wannabe wing nut. I'm not sure what these nuts are called, they were just laying around. I'll be replacing them shortly. I also put a washer between the wannabe wing nut and the L-bracket, but that was only to keep the hinge from catching. Not necessary with a real wingnut.


I noticed that the L-brackets aren't perfectly 90 degrees but are actually more acute than that. I put the felt pad to the edge of the bracket and it seems to work pretty well.

I did it this way because I can repeatedly loosen and tighten the wingnut without tearing up the hole in the wood like a screw would do.

As always, let me know what you guys think.
Thanks.

[Widelyunknown]

Final mounting. In my head, I think that a washer would better distribute the force of the nut across more area than just the nut alone. But I have been known to over-think things. Or so my gf tells me.

[Widelyunknown]

Just put in this order today to mount the cameras. A buddy told me that they could see people using a wrench on the bolts that I had in there and possibly strip the threaded insert from the camera body. That would suck.


These are a little pricey for bolts, but help put my mind at ease.

Also, I'm going to be running the book scanner with Canon Rebel XSs (1000D). For this the original mounting location for cameras is totally off. That is more a function of minimum focal length (I think, I'm not a photographer). I experimented with different lenses and the one that works best with the DSLR is a $800 lens. This won't work. The Rebel XS comes with a 50mm lens that works but sucks. I've found that the camera needs to be 19 inches outward from it's original mounting location, along the same plane. I'm going to be making extensions in the next couple days. My concern is creating a lever about the original mounting location and the possible movement that would come with that. We'll see how that all goes.

[dpc]

Just put in this order today to mount the cameras. A buddy told me that they could see people using a wrench on the bolts that I had in there and possibly strip the threaded insert from the camera body. That would suck.


These are a little pricey for bolts, but help put my mind at ease.

If you're going to allow people to use the scanner w/o you around and crank on bolts, I'd worry more about my cameras walking away. You could always use an allen head or Torx button head cap screw and that would probably cut down on the shenanigans.

[Widelyunknown]

Thanks dpc. The only people who will be using it will be people I "train." I just want to avoid any potential issues.

So I think I'm going the DSLR route. I have a Rebel XS but the problem I have been running into is that the stock camera mounting location puts the camera closer than the minimum focal length for the lens I have. I have a friend bringing a lens later that should put me closer to the original location. Something like this:


That puts the front of the lens roughly 20 inches away from the platen which lies outside of the minimum length for this lens. http://www.amazon.com/Canon-EF-S-18-55m ... 530&sr=8-2

I still need to test it, but that's where I'm at. One of the reasons I want to go the expensive DSLR route is that Canon cameras come with an EOS utility that allows me to tether 2 cameras, run them simultaneously, and download images directly to my laptop. I mentioned it here.

That mounting location is pretty close to the original plane that the camera was supposed to mount on. It is also 4.5 inches back.

[rob]

Hmm. Bolts for the L-brackets is an interesting idea. I suppose I could add something to the file which puts in a small pocketed area which can hide the head of a machine screw. Then you can just drill a small hole and mount the L-bracket with a wingnut. Or I could put the hole in the file to begin with, if we can get away with a > 1/4" hole.

That funny wingy nut thing, by the way, is a toggle bolt. It's used when you want to screw something into drywall -- you put a hole in the drywall, put a screw in the toggle bolt, close the bolt, shove it through the hole, it expands on the other side of the drywall, and then you can tighten the screw.

If you want to remove the toggle bolt, you completely remove the screw, which causes the toggle bolt to fall down inside the wall. This adds one curse to your project. If you're really clever, you can manipulate the toggle bolt with some wire to close it up, then you can pull it back through the hole. But this requires about the same amount of skill as picking a lock does, and usually adds a few more curses to the project, so you may as well just let it fall and get another one, they're not rare, they're just not available right when you need one, which is usually late at night because you've worked all day, made dinner, did the laundry, cleaned up after the cats, and now you have a few minutes before you have to go to bed to put up that towel rack that's been lying in the corner for the past six months, but you just put the hole in the wrong place because you're sleepy and didn't measure things right.

Yeah, bitter experience.