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I love books. There is some truly fantastic knowledge and information hidden out there in hard to find, rare, and not commercially viable books. I fin...
Let's start with getting the things you need.This book scanner employs recycled, found, and salvaged materials at every step. I think it's important t...
Often construction dumpsters have objects that are awkward to grab or even too large to fit in a car. For this reason it is good practice to bring som...
Finally, dumpsters are far from the only place to find things. This project requires some things that you will never find in dumpsters -- like working...
To make the frame, you will need to acquire some materials. I was able to get almost everything from the trash.*. You need an 8' 2x4 or the equivalent...
Cut your board into appropriately sized pieces. Because it is easier to cut 2x4's than countertop material, I simply measured my piece of countertop a...
Make a little template to drill pilot holes for your woodscrews. I used this piece of plastic angle, but you can use anything, even a folded piece of ...
Screw it together! Here is the assembled base. For fun and to check the fit of my work, I rested the countertop on it again.
If you haven't already, cut your column piece. It is nothing more than a 4' piece of 2x4.
Now we need to attach the column. In this design, the base is attached to the column with four bolts so that the scanner can be torn down and moved ea...
Bolt the column in place.
Place your countertop material and screw it to the frame. This is not very critical.
Measure the distance between the two mounting holes and drill two screws into the side of the base. Stick it on the screws. Done. Gorgeous.
Congratulations on making the base for your book scanner.One of the nastier problems in scanning books is that the "center" of the book shifts as you ...
There are many ways you can make the book holder. In fact, my first book holder was made entirely of cardboard, and it worked well enough to digitize ...
A hot glue gun is a good tool to have. The hotter, the better. Miter box, 14" Harbor Freight Part Number 99932.HDPE.Beg, borrow, find or steal some HD...
Screw one strip at the back of the base. Be sure it is parallel with the back of the base.
Set your miter box in place. This miter box is 13.5x7". Set the next strip of plastic in front of it and push it against the miter box so that it beco...
Screw the second strip.
The next part of the book holder assembly is where the book actually rests. As with the other parts of this instructable, you can (and should) substit...
Cut two pieces of coroplast (wood, MDF, etc) at 11x15". 11x15"... This is one of the few hard recommendations in this instructable. I have found that ...
Glue the two 11x15" pieces together at a perfect 90 degree angle. I glued them together with industrial hot glue. This stuff is pure magic. Highly rec...
Glue your two 5x15" pieces on the inside of your VST. Glue them 2 to 2.5" from the centerpoint of the "V". The idea here is to allow the spine of the ...
Attach the toolbox liner material to the VST. This keeps the book from sliding when you scan it, which is critical to the operation of the device. Thi...
The plastics in this part are something you should buy new. Unfortunately, I have found no good way to make a platen from recycled materials. I have ...
Have your pieces cut at a local plastics place. Ask them, if possible, to route the edges smooth. It will make gluing the pieces much easier. If you d...
Assemble your platen as shown. Leave the plastic/paper covering on as long as possible. If you make even a small scratch on the imaging surface, that ...
Take a 4-6" chunk of wood and screw the hinge to it as shown.
Mark the centerline of your rear platen gusset and place the hinge on it to mark out the holes. Drill them, and attach the hinge with some screws and ...
Test Clamp it to the column with one of your clamps. You don't want to permanently screw it to the column because using a clamp lets you adjust the pl...
You need a column to put your lights on. This column should be as long as the base -- in my case, a little over 22". Materials:Some wood (I had a scra...
Let's talk for a minute about lighting. Now, one thing that made me laugh is that in the very description of the Epilog Laser contest, they mention us...
Let me start by saying that this whole system is designed to work under non-ideal conditions and to be manufactured from just about anything -- this i...
Why not CFLs? Fluorescent lighting is totally inappropriate for photographic devices like these. First of all, fluorescent lights flicker at 60 or 120...
So perhaps surprisingly, the most sensible choice was halogen lighting. On my first scanner, I bought new halogens and found that their lack of flicke...
All that said, mounting your lights will depend on what you can find. I found this very neat light bar at Habitat for Humanity ReStore. It cost 1$. Si...
You'll need at least one working camera to move this project along. Firmware installation is step 1. Because it is so complicated, I made a video for ...
You have two cameras but only one display. You need a video switch! You can buy one, but I made my own from recycled materials. Step 1. Find an old VC...
Extract the RCA jacks. The kind that have left and right audio plus a video (red, white, and yellow) are the most convenient to work with. I got these...
Connect all grounds/shields together. The two input grounds and the output ground should be soldered together. I found the grounds by touching my mult...
Decide which of the three jacks you want to be an output. I chose the middle one. Connect the center pin of the video output to the center pin of the ...
Glue the switch and jacks together to make it easy to operate the switch.Put a little velcro on the bottom and stick it to your book scanner.
The two scanners I've built so far feature two different display systems. You should strongly consider using some display system on your scanner, beca...
To modify the device for video input, open the bezel of the unit. Look for "signal wire" -- gray wire with a shield and a white center conductor. Cut ...
Solder an RCA jack to the cable you just cut. Typically the center conductor is the video signal and the woven wire shield is the ground.
Test with a video input signal. IT WORKS!
Ordinarily this DVD player would shut itself off if there was not a DVD in it for say, 10 minutes. There will never be a DVD in it again , so we need ...
Get the datasheet for the voltage regulator (and other chips if you suspect them). I used Octopart.com to look up the datasheet by entering the number...
Reassemble the device! You now have a free, recycled LCD screen for any project. I also made a little visor for mine from a scrap of black foamcore ma...
The easiest display is just an old analog TV. Try to find one with composite (RCA) inputs. Since the digital switchover here in the US, I have seen do...
It's important to have a good support system for your cameras. In both of my book scanners, I've had a good way to support them, but both my methods d...
For the new scanner, I happened to have the remains of two Elmo Classroom Presenters. They're usually used in classrooms to project the handwriting of...
Left to find was an appropriate camera bracket. For the Canon Powershot A590, I discovered that 2" angle brackets are the perfect thing. They provide ...
Mounting the cameras is simple. I make little DIY camera finger bolts by taking a 1/4 20 bolt with a flattened head (unfortunately, I can't find the n...
The nice thing is that you can make almost anything into a camera arm. One idea I had is a very simple DIY "gorillapod" which is mounted to the top o...
Mounting the camera arms is a little tricky because the lens of the camera is not in the center of the camera or perfectly on-axis with the arm. What ...
The firmware we installed earlier allows the cameras to be triggered electronically using their USB connectors. To get them to fire at the same time, ...
Locate your USB hub. I found this one in the trash bin at work -- it was some kind of medication promo. Since USB1 is outdated, you should be able to ...
Open it up. We are going to cut off the USB connector, but we need to determine which pin is positive and which is ground. The easiest way to do this ...
Cut the original USB connector from the end of the wire. Leave a little wire on it in case you need it in a project later. Isolate the brown (ground) ...
Disassemble your flashlight. Take out the battery case. Sand the ends of it to prepare it to accept solder. Remove the batteries and solder a red wire...
Now we need to take a break from the hub and work on a switch. You need to get the rest of your flashlight disassembled. This flashlight is just press...
Take your momentary switch (mine is from an old computer that was trashed) and put the leads through the hole in the center of the cap. You may have t...
Drill a hole in the flashlight body to accommodate the coil cord. Insert the coil cord into the body.
Solder the wires from the switch to the coil cord wires. The order is not important. I used heat shrink tubing to keep things nice and clean. Heat the...
Returning to the other side of the flashlight, assemble the threaded rod, washer, and junk as shown. The idea here is glue the rod into the center of ...
Add another nut on the outside of the last nut you put on. Drill a 1/4" hole through a scrap of wood or HDPE. Put another nut on the other side of the...
If you chose to use threaded rod and it is too long, cut it to length.
Solder the switch in-line between the battery case +V and the +V of the USB hub. Solder the grounds of the battery case and USB hub together. Your ele...
Mark your platen, drill mounting holes and mount the handle assembly to the platen. I put velcro on all this stuff and velcro'd it to the base. That k...
The previous switch designs were electronically similar, but had some shortcomings. For that reason, I'm just going to show you some pictures and disc...
The second switch, built with the help of my friend Lyle, is a much cooler thing, but it is rather difficult to build. It consists of the same scaveng...
You got this far, the final steps are pretty easy. Paint your device. To get good output from our cameras we need to eliminate sources of glare, and t...
At the time of this writing, the best camera for this task is the Canon Powershot A590 IS. It has enough resolution, enough manual control, works with...
Hopefully your cameras have arrived by now. Plug your main outlet strip into the wall. Plug your TV into the outlet strip. Plug your lights into the o...
You need to put the cameras in Manual Mode by switching the Mode Dial to "'M'".Set the aperture to F8. Set the shutter to 1/50 of a second or faster. ...
Put a book under your platen, and adjust platen height where the platen attaches to the column. You want the platen to rest at the base of the binding...
Aaron Clarke wrote the software to process the output of this book scanning system. It reads in all the images, allows you to set a crop, corrects for...
Run Page Builder by clicking on "PgBldr.exe". Watch this tutorial video to understand the interface conventions. Page Builder is highly effective soft...
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