Clemd's DIY build in photos

[Drake Ravensmith]

Clemd, I think I may know why you had to change your base to scan thick books. I was reviewing your photos again (Which is odd since I should be able to draw them from memory by now) and I came across this photo.

Clemnd left side cradle

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Daniel's instructions have the fixed side of the cradle flush with the edge.

Daniel's left side cradle

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Althogh now that I look at them side by side, your triangles look smaller. Did you reduce the size? If not, I may have found some of your missing space.

[clemd973]

Drake: I did reduce the size of the triangles...don't remember why. Please continue...

[Drake Ravensmith]

Well, I'm not so sure I didn't make a mistake now. It's hard to say without a scale unit to tinker with. If you moved the fixed left side book holder too far it may have thrown off the position the original designs. I guess you could call it the left most center aka the beginning of a book. Now that I really think hard on that, you would have had to move it too far left. Since your triangles are smaller but moved right and I assume that block is another 3x8 I'm more inclined now to say that you actually shifted the leftmost center to the right ever so slightly. Which would have been fine because the beginning of a book has the cradle the farthest right it has to go. Scanning the book would move the cradle steadily left. In Daniel's pics it appears as if the left most position is perftly suited to how far right the entire cradle can slide but then it seems as if the cradle can be adjusted far wider (ie to suit an enomously thick book) than the cradle can move to actually scan to the end of such a thick book. Again, hard to tell without an actual model. So for now, maybe it's safest to ignore me.

How thick were the books that were giving you trouble?

[clemd973]

How thick were the books that were giving you trouble?

If I remember correctly, we couldn't decipher this part of the build very well from the original plans. The first placement of the slides was not far enough to the left to give the proper amount of rightward movement to accommodate even a medium sized book, so we ended up moving the slides flush left. While this worked better, it wasn't sufficient for a book, let's say, 3" thick. The added 3" in the most recent modification does allow for that, especially with my thicker books. Regardless, one needs to make sure ther is sufficient room for left and right movement at the base, depending on the size of the books one will scan, prior to the build to avoid making adjustments later. If ther needs to be adjustments made later, though, at least what I show here is an option. Remember, the platen is stationary so make sure the base allows for enough cradle movement so that the platen is able to fit down into the spine of the book without much needed adjustment of the book itself because when you have to adjust book placement, it will affect subsequent images which might cause problems in later processing.

The books I scan probably range between 1/2" to 3.5" . Rather have the extra room and not need it, than need the extra room and not have it. There is a lot of overkill in my build...I like the wiggle room.

[Rhea27]

Clemd - can you tell me where to find glare-free acrylic? I can't seem to find any, and I'm having a problem with glare. I moved my lights up higher and that seems to help, but I still would like to find glare-free acrylic sheets. Thanks!

[clemd973]

Clemd - can you tell me where to find glare-free acrylic? I can't seem to find any, and I'm having a problem with glare. I moved my lights up higher and that seems to help, but I still would like to find glare-free acrylic sheets. Thanks!

Rhea, I purchased the acrylic from Estreetplastics.com. The original plans called for 11"x15", but that would have been a custom cut and more expensive so I bought two pieces of their pre-cut 12"x16" for about $9/ea. BE SURE TO READ MY COMMENTS/TIPS ON THIS PART OF MY BUILD EARLIER IN THIS THREAD. Hope this helps.

[Drake Ravensmith]

Okay Clemd, this time I know for sure what happened with your cradle. What you did was screw the base of your cradle just slightly left of where you ought to have. In this pic you can see that your cradle is able to be placed as far right as you want since your slides need to slide right to begin a book. You could have simply unscrewed you base, shifted .5/.75 inches right and screwed it back down to fix your problem. At worst, your cradle would occasionally bump the right side base. Even then, since the cradle can only be shifted so far right before bumping into the 3x8 piece it is clamped to, you could have also shortened the base if you wanted.

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[clemd973]

Okay Clemd, this time I know for sure what happened with your cradle. What you did was screw the base of your cradle just slightly left of where you ought to have. In this pic you can see that your cradle is able to be placed as far right as you want since your slides need to slide right to begin a book. You could have simply unscrewed you base, shifted .5/.75 inches right and screwed it back down to fix your problem. At worst, your cradle would occasionally bump the right side base. Even then, since the cradle can only be shifted so far right before bumping into the 3x8 piece it is clamped to, you could have also shortened the base if you wanted.

Yeah, that was a screwy part of the build. While, at the time, we didn't have a clue as to how this would play out, it seemed to be OK. Once the build was finished and I first ran into the problem, it seemed like the easiest thing to do was to replace the right side 2x4 to gain that needed 1.75", and so far that has worked out well. Your suggestion is very good, and I'm glad you figured it out in order to be able to incorporate that into your build before the fact...after the fact, however, I think the way I did it involved the least amount of work/trouble, i.e., four screws out, one cut, four screws in. Voila! Starting from scratch, though, I'd go your way. I just finished my thickest book - 3.25", and all worked out well...

Except for this...and I know it's in one of the earlier posts in this thread between me and Spamsickle - that involves having the platen fit down flush into the spine of the book. My solution was using the adjustable cradle, blah, blah, blah, and he said something about using a piece of PVC - if I remember correctly. With this large book, I went out and bought a piece of 1.5" PVC to put under the spine which raised the entire book in order to push it up flush against the platen. This seemed to work out better, in addition to adjusting the book within the movable cradle. I'll try to upload some pics to illustrate.

Finally, weigh the pros and cons of Acrylic vs. glass on your build. I'm noticing that the glare-free acrylic is causing a little wash-out of the black text in my shots, yet there isn't much of a glare issue at all. Glass will provide a more true-to-color image, but may present with a glare issue depending on your lighting setup. I'm going to try regular acrylic next and do a comparison, only because it's easier to swap than reconfiguring my platen to handle glass - plus I'm concerned about how fragile that 1/8" glass will be. I looked into using 2 pieces of "Tru-vue" Museum Glass for the platen, which has camera lens quality anti-reflective coating - which would potentially mean no wash-out in color, but they are about $52 each in the size I need.

[shaneybo]

I was wondering if you had added your third light yet and could post a pic/comments?

Also, I have a question about your switch. Doesn't it have 4 small batteries in it that will eventually need to be replaced? Is it going to be a problem to remove it from the glue to change them?

Thank you.

Drake, I have added my third light, and it works very well. (I'll try to post a pic by the end of the day) However, I find that these particular LED lights produce a blue tint on the page in the rendered image, which I adjust in Adobe Light Room 3 with no problem. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to try a different lighting system using the lights found here. You can also order the same light from Amazon.com. The LED's I'm using emit "white" light at 5000-6500 lumens. I'm hoping the new lights will produce between 6000-7500 lumens (If I've got the rating correct). As soon as I figure out how I'm going to mount them, I'll test them, upload a few pics and perhaps even include a few comparison shots of test-pages. I am very satisfied with my end results (wish there was some place for everyone to post samples in order to compare and question each other more); however, I just ran across someone who produced the final Harry Potter book in Rowling's series that TOTALLY blows mine away. I'm having trouble contacting this person, as he/she is a member of a Torrent group that has no means of directly contacting members. (The person's username...in case anyone knows him/her...is BeB1234567 - hope this person doesn't mind me linking him/her here, but this book rocks!).

Clemb,

Did BeB123456 get back to you yet?

I would be very interested in this myself

Shane