copy stand - cheap and easy to build - document camera for sale

I have collected a lot of documents as part of my work;
Recently, I decided to get the "tree-filled" sheets back into the environment to clean up my living space and office by scanning everything I could scan.
I recently threw away a tablet scanner;
It's too slow. I almost never used it.
I need something convenient and quick;
It doesn't need to do an ultra high fidelity scan, as long as it's readable.
I have been shooting some files for a while, not scanning them;
It's fast and convenient, but the handheld is slow and a bit "hit and miss ".
The shooting documents are not fresh :~ Cafamiliies/reference/Photo _ doc. html many more)
Most of these settings have some handy issues for my use;
I need a compact setup that is more or less permanent and I can quickly pump thousands of documents to catch up with the backlog and then handle the daily build up.
Some of the links above refer to the use of commercial copy stations.
Many of them are now redundant from the old darkroom amplifier.
There are very few copies sold by EBay, but they are too big and too expensive (postage)
Or not very suitable for A4 paper.
I decided to make one myself and it would be better to use the pieces around my home (
Yes, I am a loyalty).
Even if you buy all the materials, you can build this replica station for less than $30 and it will take less than an hour.
Like me, you may find most of the material in your house or in a well-stocked workshop.
You need to do one:
The list looks long but comprehensive;
Mainly nuts, bolts and washers. )A camera (
Better than 3 M res. or greater)
Remote Shutter release (
Optional but a very good idea).
Power Adapter for camera (
Optional but a very good idea).
Optional USB cable for camera.
The width and length of the plate substrate is 2 inch larger than the page you want to scan.
3x8mm rebar (
Length depends on the camera, see below)
The length of the 1 x "screw bar is about enough to cross half of the width of the board, and the length is about 1" Aluminum Angle extrusion ,(
The length depends on the substrate, see below).
1x "long" round head screw with nut and two washers (pivot)
7 x rubber tip for 8mm threaded rod.
1x8mm round head bolt screw ~ 1 "long13x nut, suitable for 8mm rebar (
A lot of nuts = a lot of adaptability. )
14 x washer for 8mm threaded rods4x nut for threaded "screw bar (
One of them can be wing nuts for convenience.
1x2 "long" 20 TPI Bolt for mounting threads for your camera.
1x Cap ~ 1 "diameter.
1x washing machine for camera holder 1x Bike rearview mirror-easy to adjust despite cheap.
1x ~ 4 "the correct diameter of the root tube bicycle mirror.
1x5 "long" round head bolts.
I used a coach, Bolt.
1x nut for mounting long bolts.
2 x washers for long bolts;
If possible, it should be the same diameter as the tube.
2 table lamps with small diffuse spotlight bulbs or a single table lamp with reflector. (see below).
Some discarded corrugated cardboard or similar page centers stop. Masking tape.
Fabric binding tape or thin rubber tape if you can get it.
Tool: Square saw for cutting aluminum extrusion tape measure and pen. Adjustable wrench or pair of wrench for documents and/or diamond paperA bit and bit. Small pipe cutters, measuring blocks, scissors, burrs removal tools, center punches, craft knives or surgical knives.
From this picture that is not illustrated, the construction of the stands is quite obvious.
You just cut your aluminum into a certain length, drill all the holes and fix them together.
So I will provide some tips and then the following steps will explain some of my design choices: it would be better to start by marking the plate that is ready to drill 4 holes --
One in each corner.
Then, transfer the hole mark to the aluminum angle before drilling.
This will ensure that the hole spacing on the board matches exactly with the top frame.
I always use concealer glue to bring the surface of the item that has been done;
Marking is also easier.
Use a drilling machine if you can;
This helps to keep the rod perpendicular to the plate.
I used a center punch when I drilled the aluminum, and I also drilled the pilot holes and then expanded them to the size of the bar to get the best precision.
Bypass all the cuts on the aluminum piece with a single file to avoid painful obstacles.
When assembling, first install all the legs on the substrate and maintain the level before installing the frame.
The flat base plate or panel must have enough space to install 3 rebar bars and there is still room for the pages you want to scan.
About 2 inch (1” margin)
That's enough for the stick, and for me, in Oz, it's usually an A4 page, about 8 "x 11", which means that a board is about 10 "x 14" or
I made two copy stations, one cutting board using polypropylene kitchen (office)
There is also a kitchen board made of bamboo (home).
As long as you can drill holes on the bottom plate, it is strong enough and thick enough to provide stability, you can use almost anything for the bottom plate.
If the thickness is less than about 10mm, it may not be possible to provide sufficient stability.
If you can find something with iron
Metal Top (such as a magnetic whiteboard), then you can use a magnet to hold or center the block as a page.
You can get great magnetic strips from the old refrigerator door seals.
Warning: If you take an old dish board from the kitchen, you may have an angry wife and onion smell at work. :-)
3 long legs and 1 short leg.
This leaves a large window for easy access and high speed replication.
You should first decide where you will place the finished copy station as this will determine which corner has short legs.
The stand on my desk is on the left, so the short leg is on the right.
If you are going to have your booth on the right, maybe you should look at the pictures in the mirror.
It is easy to mirror the design;
In fact, some extra holes can be made into a convertible.
The short legs are connected by nuts and washers.
This leg defines the height of the bottom plate above your table, so install it first.
The rubber tip is designed to prevent scratches on your desk at the end of the rod, and also to prevent the holder from sliding when it is violently copied.
I also put the rubber tip on the top of the stick to prevent the sleeves from tearing apart.
I think you can choose to use cap nuts here.
I used tips "tips on 8mm threaded bars, a bit tight, but they were screwed on solid threads.
The 3 screw bars I use are 8mm in diameter, but that doesn't matter.
The length of the stick will depend on the distance from the camera to the perfect frame.
The best way to determine the distance is to measure it.
Use test documents with maximum length, width, and minimum text to set the camera for the widest view and the correct focus range.
Move as close as possible, frame the entire document only, stay as stable as possible, and take some test photos.
Remember that the page should be in portrait mode, so turn the camera to fit-
Don't waste any pixels!
Check that your lens has good focus and readability.
Once you have completed the setup, when you are at the right distance to fit your camera, find someone to measure the distance from the camera mounting screw holes to the test page.
This distance plus 2-
Considering other components, the minimum length of the screw bar is 3 inch.
You can add a little bit and allow to shoot a larger file than A4 like me;
I ended up with an 18 "long stick.
The rod is fixed on the base plate with two nuts and two washers.
As you can see from the photo, the top frame is "L"-shaped and has a rotating arm on the short leg of "L.
~ 1 "the 3 lengths of aluminum angle extrusion shall have a reasonable wall thickness of 1/8" or greater.
You can replace it with hardwood floors here, but I haven't tried it.
L The piece of the frame is as long as your board and the other piece is as long as your board.
The pivot arm must be long enough to support the base of the camera and place the lens right above the middle of the motherboard, and stiil has some additional adjustment screws and wing nut lengths.
The FZ20 has mounting hole offset relative to the lens axis, and many cameras have similar properties.
So measure and calculate carefully.
Of course, you can drill extra holes for you to use other cameras on the same stand.
I ended up adding a hole to the pivot arm to fit my fz50.
To give the FZ50 a bigger gap, I had to move the wing nut to the other end of the pivot arm screw;
Keep this in mind when cutting the pivot arm and be generous.
Before starting to cut the pivot point of the pivot arm, the third step is a short round head screw, and I used the diameter.
But this is not important.
However, the position of the pivot point is crucial;
Mark the middle of the L frame shorter aluminum angle and then mark it for drilling the camera arm pivot offset.
The offset is the distance from the bottom of the camera lens to the center, plus the width of an outer surface of the aluminum angle.
See chart: the pivot arm is adjusted and locked in a position aligned with a threaded bar about half the width of the board.
You can use a wide variety of thread bar diameters here;
Even in the same diameteras the legs.
I rarely adjust it despite the wing nut so you can get away with a nice cap nut.
I covered the area where the camera was mounted on the pivot arm with fabric binding tape.
It works, but thin tape may be better if you can get it.
It's a good idea to cover this area, not only because of the increased friction, the camera stays stronger, but also protects the base of your precious camera.
I cut a hole in the tape with a scalpel knife.
The camera features 2 "long" 20 TPI bolts and comes with a cap, 3 nuts and 2 lock washers.
You need to have a lock washer under the head of the Screw, a lock washer under the opposite nut, and tighten it to make sure the lid does not release the wheel.
You can install the camera with a short screw and tighten it with a screwdriver, but it is much easier to install and uninstall the camera with my cap kludge.
So far you may already know what the bike rearview mirror is!
The mirror allows you to see the back of the camera when the user sits down;
This allows easy check to see if the replication is OK.
It also shows if the camera is accidentally turned on, which is very important if you run with a battery.
The mirror is mounted on a short tube track of the right size of the bicycle mirror.
I used the scrap tubular steel broom handle;
White vinyl coating looks good.
I cut it with a small tube cutter so the end is already Square.
The tubing is fixed in place by the long round head bolt in the middle (
I used a coach, Bolt).
I found a gasket placed below the head of the same diameter as the Tube OD.
This makes it easier to put the mirror on.
If you can't find a washing machine of the right size, put the mirror on before installing the tube.
You will most likely press your precious personal digital camera on this booth, which is good;
It is likely to exceed the requirements of this project.
I have pointed out that the resolution of the camera is better than 3 Meg.
My reasons are as follows.
For views of A4 page size, pixels per inch are about 105 times the resolution of the camera in pixels.
For example, the 4-meter camera will be 105x2 = 210 PPI.
This is a little better than a fax machine, and when you consider a little bit of noise and focus blur, I don't think the camera will compare ~ 3 m much smaller (182 PPI)
Good enough work.
So, forget the webcam and the cheap digital camera you found in the display bag.
Still, if you want to have a dedicated camera for the booth, you should be able to get a cheap camera with enough quality from eBay.
I know Samsung made several cameras in text mode like s8 60.
The S8 60 is cheap but I haven't tried it.
I hope to get some feedback on the right camera.
I'm using the old Panasonic FZ20, which has a 5 m sensor that provides an image of 2560x1920 pixels;
So let's say that the A4 page passes through the image exactly at a resolution of 1920/8.
25 "~ = 233 pixels/inch.
I also have a Panasonic FZ50, which is a 10 m camera with around 332 PPI on A4 paper.
This extra resolution is once in a while a good thing, but the file is much larger as well.
I 'd better say a few words about the lighting to be used;
If you look through the link to Daniel Reetz: Other than that link, you will find a lot of lighting about this replication.
As a professional photographer, I must say that everything I read from Daniel about lighting is absolutely correct.
It is your responsibility to get some good lighting if you are filing books for the future, so please read what Daniel said.
As far as I'm concerned, I just need to be able to read the text on the LCD screen;
This is the content of the text I am after, not the perfect and accurate reproduction of a document or book.
I tried getting out of bed first.
The headlights are clipped on the legs, but they leave a lot of thought on the shiny page.
Two desk lamps with small Pearl spotlights work best and not too high about 1 feet or more from both ends of the motherboard.
This solution uses a lot of desktop space.
Currently at home, I use a desk lamp at one end of the table.
At the other end, I nailed a curved foil reflector to my leg with clothes.
On the foil, I have a piece of translucent plastic;
The bare foil itself creates wrinkles when approaching the main body to produce uneven spot reflections.
I put a folder paper towel on the lower half of the table lamp to make the light more diffuse. (See the photos)
At work, I use a mixture of ambient lighting, daylight from the window and terrible fluorescence.
Occasionally I see reflections on shiny pages, so I either block the direct lights with plastic bags or turn off some lights.
The only trick I use is to make sure I set the white balance on the camera before starting.
Yes, I got a lot of shades of gray in different shades instead of white and a lot of noise, but I found that this can reduce eye fatigue when I zoom in the image to read. (
I should mention here that I usually wear reading glasses and it's great to be able to zoom in and sift through images and read them for free. )
The color change actually helps to find a specific page in the thumbnail.
If I were to enter the photographer's ivory tower, I would point out that for white black text, the jpeg compression of the camera would make a lot of noise.
So, when I shoot for the sake of art, I turn off the studio lights and shoot them raw.
However, the final lighting depends on you, and it is the most important thing to meet your needs.
I tried various ways to center the page while still allowing quick changes.
The best way I 've found so far is to press 4 scrap corrugated boards with masking tape :(
At work, you can put your "in Ray" on the board as a page guide and use the recycle bin as your "out Ray "; -). )
As I mentioned earlier, in white (or pref. 18% grey)page.
Set the camera to have the correct focus and possible macro settings.
I also found it a good idea to turn on the shutter sound.
Sound feedback becomes very important when browsing a bunch of files quickly so you know you have photos.
Depending on the quality of the camera, you may get some needle pad or barrel distortion.
This is usually not a problem for me as it does not affect the readability of the text.
There are a lot of lens distortion correction applications if you need to make your image completely undistorted.
For the fastest throughput, get them ready to go first with your originals; right way up;
Stack in an easy-to-close position in a predetermined order.
I sometimes put a small object (coin, blu-tak)
On the blackboard facing my corner so that the page does not lie completely flat;
This makes it easier to pick up the page after copying.
When not using the camera for a while, I put a business card on the LCD to stop the dust.
I also have a piece of paper hanging on my lens cover, so I won't forget to remove the lens cover until I start shooting.
A feature of the FZ20 is that you have to uninstall the camera to access the storage chip and battery.
I found it more convenient to connect the USB cable to the camera so I can run the picture directly into the computer.
It will take longer, but it will be much easier.
So I have all 3 outlets on my FZ20 including power, USB and remote control.
I also found this Holder useful for macro photography, zooming in on small instructions, business cards, and saving all these small waste paper notes with Miscellaneous data.
I want to make the most of this design, so in the future I might have my daughter sew some white rip lock nylon as a light tent.
I made an extra full long leg and occasionally replaced the short leg;
Later this will support the fourth corner of the light tent.
Stand stand is very successful and I can archive around 3000 pages on one DVD;
The only "disappointment" so far came from the expelled silverfish who once lived in my office.