[zwayhowder]

I made one of these during my MBA. I spent close to $2000AUD including the two Nikon mirrorless cameras I purchased. I am not particularly handy and made it out of spare 2x4 lumber I had so it wasn’t light.

But it worked, I scanned about two dozen short term library books that I needed to reference frequently during my course at a cost of about $85 per book. If I’d purchased the time limited ebooks they would have cost $125 each, and been scattered across 3 different bookstore apps.

I would scan while watching tv and could do approx 1000 pages per hour.

I also learned that I should not do carpentry and potentially saved tens of thousands by hiring a handyman or carpenter for home diy…

[cf1241290841]

There is an amazing one using plastic plumbing pipes still on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns3jGFbJvXI

[zwayhowder]

Someone at the time had a CNC aluminium one on ebay for $700 or so. I thought "I can do that cheaper". I was very wrong. The actual parts weren't too bad.(I still had to spend $1400 on the cameras IIRC), but the number of tools I didn't own was a lot higher than I expected.

Still no regrets, I had a fun week of arts and crafts and got to stick it to Elsevier and other academic publishers :D

[cf1241290841]

It does sound like an amazing project you did there.

You are also making a very good point with the surprising effort and equipment this can take. I ran into trouble just fixing something on a heatsink the other day. Turns out in addition to drill, drillbit and tapping set i really need something to keep the drill straight :)