The book ripper used in our demo video, the one that created the test images and matching OCR results, is made from a single 24″x12″ piece of plexi with a bend in the middle. This turns out to be a good general purpose size for scanning the books in my library, which are mostly hard cover and large paperbacks.
If you have a similar collection of books, or just want to put together a book ripper capable of handling a wide variety of book sizes, I recommend the 24″x12″ size, or even a 28″x12″ one for very large books. I’ve tested both sizes on full books and am quite happy with the results.
If, on the other hand, you only want to rip small works, you might be able to pick up some ripping speed by using a smaller device. At least that is the the theory I’m going to start testing this week with two new rippers, one a shrunken 18″x8″ version of the standard book ripper design and one a new design built with off the shelf plexi sheets and webcams.
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Awesome! I’ve been fidling around for years with home grown book scanning solutions, as well as commercial solutions (optibook). My latest optibook has conveniently broken after 1 year (again..planned obsolescence maybe?), so I’ll be back at the home brew solution! Good to hear this is picking up steam in the DIY/Make community! I’ll be a regular reader here now!
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