In recent times, electronic books have become more popular than physical books due to their ease of portability, searchability, and quick access to a vast number of titles. This has led to a growing preference for e-books among researchers, scientists, and students. Additionally, the creation of e-books makes it easy to preserve the physical copies of old, valuable books while still using them as much as needed.
To create an e-book from a hard copy of a book, a common scanner found in libraries or universities is the desktop scanner. The book is placed under the scanner, and the pages are manually turned by the person scanning the text after each scan. However, when dealing with a large number of books, the bottleneck in the scanning process is the need to turn each page manually after each scan.
To address this challenge, we have designed a system that includes a 3-bar mechanism, a stepper motor, and an Arduino board. The system is connected to the scanner and flips the pages automatically after each scan. The primary and core component of this system is the 3-link mechanism that flips every page using two actions: detaching and flipping. The stepper motor rotates and transfers the necessary torque to the connected gears, which in turn, transfers the rotational motion of the motor to the reciprocating angular motion of the detaching link. This causes the detaching link to move from the outside of the book to the middle of the target page, detaching the upper page from the others. Another link connected to the detaching link turns immediately afterward to completely flip the detached page.
This system offers several advantages, including adjustability to accommodate book dimensions and the table or desk on which scanning is done. Before starting to scan, the system can be positioned and fixed according to the book's size and clamped on the table. In this way, the system can help users scan large volumes of pages quickly and efficiently without wasting time and energy turning pages manually.
In conclusion, this automated scanning system is a cost-effective solution, with all the required parts readily available in the market. It can help users rapidly scan documents with minimal effort and save valuable time, especially when dealing with a high number of pages.