How hard is it to take apart and ship an archivist kit?

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Jesse
Posts: 1
Joined: 09 Nov 2015, 00:49
Number of books owned: 0
Country: Japan

How hard is it to take apart and ship an archivist kit?

Post by Jesse »

Hi all, I'm doing research abroad for a year, and realized that a book scanner would be tremendously helpful for my work. The problem is, I will be moving again in a year, and will need to ship the scanner when I leave here.

So while something like the archivist sounds perfect for my needs, would I be risking a difficult breakdown/packaging of the scanner at the end of the year? I'm not the best builder, packager, etc, so dealing with big pieces of glass etc, seems like it might not be the best idea ...

Also, if the archivist wouldn't make sense in my case, any suggestions on an alternative? I was considering the Plustek Opticbook 4800 before learning about this forum. Figure that I could always use it as a flatbed scanner in the future, if I were to get an archivist or something else in the future.

Any ideas, experiences would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
-Jesse
duerig
Posts: 388
Joined: 01 Jun 2014, 17:04
Number of books owned: 1000
Country: United States of America

Re: How hard is it to take apart and ship an archivist kit?

Post by duerig »

The Archivist is pretty easy to take apart and put together. It is like advanced Ikea furniture. And most of the parts are pretty durable. Take special care with the lights, the platen glass, and the electronics, but the rest is just screws and plywood.

Regarding the lights, just wrap them in a half inch of bubble wrap and they should be good. In the worst case you might have to reseat the lamps in the holders.

Regarding the platen glass, when I ship them I take very special care with the glass. It ships in a separate box and I go to fairly extreme measures when it comes to packaging them to make sure they won't break. If you order from me, I'd recommend keeping the packaging and shipping it in the same way as you found it. And in the worst case, it is only $65 plus shipping to replace both plates.

The electronics are cameras, a Raspberry Pi, and a bunch of cords and adapters. Ship it like anything similar.

In terms of expense, the biggest factor is whether the postal size limitations will let you ship the plywood for a reasonable rate. The plywood comes in a large parcel (31"x24"x8.5" if I ship it). And it is larger than the size limits for ordinary shipping in some countries. It might be cheaper to check it as baggage on your plane instead of trying to ship it separately. Or at least do that with the larger pieces.

Best of luck. If you have any more questions, feel free to email me at help at tenrec dot builders.

-D
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