Post-it note page turner experiment

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TomHorsley
Posts: 96
Joined: 30 Jan 2011, 10:39

Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by TomHorsley »

I have just wrapped a single post-it note sheet, sticky side out, around a 1 inch diameter plastic rod and sat around pressing the rod to the page of a book, lifting the page, and turning it by moving the rod across the book until the post-it peeled off and dropped the page. I'm not sure how long a single post-it note would work, but I turned several pages till I got bored. It seemed to do a really good job just picking up a single page, and it stuck to it well enough to lift and turn it every time. Of course there is still the matter of automating the movement of the rod, and getting it out of the way of the cameras, but it was a very promising experiment. Probably wouldn't want to use post-it notes on fragile or antique papers, but for ordinary books on ordinary paper it might work really well.
spamsickle
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Joined: 06 Jun 2009, 23:57

Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by spamsickle »

Great minds...

http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=694

I said in that thread that I'd try it, but I never did. Thanks for the reminder.
Ryan_phx
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Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by Ryan_phx »

I wonder if one of these lint rollers would work better. It would keep its stickiness longer, and shouldn't be so sticky as to cause damage or make it hard to separate the page.
TomHorsley
Posts: 96
Joined: 30 Jan 2011, 10:39

Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by TomHorsley »

spamsickle wrote:Great minds...

http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=694

I said in that thread that I'd try it, but I never did. Thanks for the reminder.
I thought someone must have tried this before, but searching for "post-it" in the forum didn't turn up any results. (I guess all search engines that aren't google have an inferiority complex.)

A foam pad definitely seems like it would make more reliable contact when coming in at a slight angle than the hard rod I tried.
spamsickle
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Joined: 06 Jun 2009, 23:57

Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by spamsickle »

Yeah, I tried the forum search too, but I knew I'd seen something here before so when that came back empty, I went to Google.

If I ever try this, the "foam pad" will be my finger.
TomHorsley
Posts: 96
Joined: 30 Jan 2011, 10:39

Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by TomHorsley »

I've been thinking about just wrapping the post-it and foam around a weight, dropping it on the page from a string, then dragging the string across the book. Seems like it ought to be possible to build a dead simple mechanism to do something like that. I'll have to try more experiments some day.
TomHorsley
Posts: 96
Joined: 30 Jan 2011, 10:39

Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by TomHorsley »

OK, I couldn't resist trying one more experiment. Here are the results of my "dirtbag" experiment:

http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/har ... rtbag.html

I don't know if something like this would work reliably all the time, but the extreme low tech experiment I did here certainly seemed promising.
spamsickle
Posts: 596
Joined: 06 Jun 2009, 23:57

Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by spamsickle »

I just tried it, and my results were not so promising. I don't know if it was the book I chose or faulty technique (I did try several methods with the same book, an 8"x5" hardback with unusually thick pages), but I was consistently getting a block of 5 or more pages coming up with the page I wanted to turn. Even when it wasn't a block, I was often getting two pages stuck together.

I tried another book, and I think the problem was with the initial book. A text book, with 9" x 12" pages of standard thickness was a lot more cooperative, as long as I pushed the post-it (actually, I'm using "Post-it flags" rather than "Post-it notes") down on the corner of the book. If I tried to do it more toward the center of the page, I wasn't getting it to lift the page before peeling away.

I'll play with it in production tonight, but this may enable me to shave a second or two off of my autotimer cycle (currently six seconds between shots) for most books.
dtic
Posts: 464
Joined: 06 Mar 2010, 18:03

Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by dtic »

Electrical tape also works well, for example in this prototype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px3d9aaP9AQ
I like the idea of post-it notes though. They're universally available, very inexpensive and come in standard sizes.

But I think the ideal gripper would be some type of minimal foam vacuum suction device. With tape/post-it the stickyness is always bound to wear off pretty quickly.
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Antoha-spb
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Re: Post-it note page turner experiment

Post by Antoha-spb »

Folks, if this were given a post-it paper, it would turn thousands of pages in its own %)

Of course it's too expensive, but without excessive features it could cost ~twice as less, what would be OK for 'hi-end' DIY projects...
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