My First ScanCam

ScanCam Mark 1

I made Mark 1 from a 600 DPI Umax Astra 3470 scanner. A mechanically crude proof of concept, it was built on the body of a discarded Makita sander, mounted upside down via a tripod socket cobbled onto the top with wooden blocks. Everything was attached to the sander’s plastic case (suitably sawed up) with sheet metal screws. The sander’s flywheel circumference being about the same as the linear travel of the scanner’s carriage, I just coupled it to the scanner drive train with a belt and mounted an aluminum fork on top to carry the camera head. As the fork turned, the flex cable between the head and the main circuit board flapped into various graceful curves, guided by some bent wires. A pivoting vane on the flywheel activated the optical home position sensor. A bent wire cam flipped it up so the sensor would not see it at the 360 degree position, and another bent wire cam flipped it down again on the return trip. Mark 1 originally took C-mount movie/TV lenses; later I changed it to take Pentax screw mount SLR lenses. It never made any really nice pictures, but it convinced me that such a thing was possible.