Automated Wooden Table



  • Okay so I guess this doesn't really belong in the sidebar but nobody reads the forums so I put it here for the greater good.

    Today a made a little gadget that I use to digitize art faster (and at worse quality) than a scanner. It is a somewhat elegant implementation of the standard wooden table + camera pattern.

    Here is my instructable

    Enjoy!


     



  • No, I believe that totally belongs on the daily wtf.



  • I have come from the future where scanners have been replaced with your invention. The resistance has finally perfected their time machine and I have been sent to terminate you.



  • @DOA said:

    I have come from the future where scanners have been replaced with your invention. The resistance has finally perfected their time machine and I have been sent to terminate you.

    Actually, this method is superior to scanners in most respects - it's faster and can be far greater quality when properly built, and they don't have the appalling depth-of-field problems of a flatbed scanner. A lot of existing industrial and research image capture uses this technique (without the hanger). Another common application is book scanners, for creating digital archives of existing libraries: jamming an old book down onto a glass scanning plate damages it and you still get distortion around the spine, while camera optics can do the job much better.

    We have flatbed scanners because the people who make them think that it's easier to sell a smaller device than a larger one to the average couch-dweller, not because they're a good idea. The motors that drive them are not very accurate, and result in poor quality compared to a moderately good camera lens.
     



  • @asuffield said:

    ... it's faster ...

    No argument from me there...

    @asuffield said:

    ... and they don't have the appalling depth-of-field problems of a flatbed scanner.

    What is up with that anyway? Our new hp PSC has that problem, but my shitty old Microtek Scanmaker E6 from about ten years ago has wonderful depth of field. I remember, a long time ago, reading about scanner reviews boasting the depth of field of scanners, figures like 3.6D and 4D. I guess we've regressed away from this to devices that trip up over even slightly creased paper. I mistook the new hp for a superior device but gave up on one scan job and returned to my old Scanmaker for its superior depth of field. It also has probably the best scanner software I've seen. Epson in particular think it's clever to use an 800x600 scanning window that can't be resized no matter how large your desktop is. (Both the Mac and Windows versions demonstrated this spectacular design flaw.) The only snag with mine is that if I zoom in really close and perform a scan, it bombs the OS.



  • No wire hangers, ever!



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    What is up with that anyway? Our new hp PSC has that problem, but my shitty old Microtek Scanmaker E6 from about ten years ago has wonderful depth of field.
    Let me guess: your old scanner is CCD, and the new one is CIS (you can differentiate them by looking at the lamp - CCD scanners usually have a white cold cathode, while CIS scanners have red, green and blue LEDs that quickly turn off and on while scanning (one color at once)).



  • @ender said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    What is up with that anyway? Our new hp PSC has that problem, but my shitty old Microtek Scanmaker E6 from about ten years ago has wonderful depth of field.
    Let me guess: your old scanner is CCD, and the new one is CIS ...

    Correct. This is the first I've heard of CIS (and that's nice to know -- what not to look out for ;) but I had noticed the LED illumination. I presume that LEDs are not bright enough for a CCD scanner?



  • CIS means Contact Image Sensor, and as the name implies, it only works nicely when there's direct contact with the thing you're scanning. You'll notice that the image gets blurred, but not much darker when the object wasn't directly on the surface.


Log in to reply