Document Scanning Equipment Commercial

Document scanning bureaux use specialist scanning equipment from manufacturers such as Bell & Howell, Kodak, IBML, Fujitsu and Canon. 

Ranging in price from several hundred pounds to tens of thousands of pounds (and even approaching £100,000), these scanners are capable of outputs of hundreds of thousands of images per day, every day. 

Sizes of these industrial scanners vary from large desktop size up to “room sized” equipment several metres long.  Once set, the scanner can be loaded with hundreds of sheets of paper in one go, and left to automatically detect and feed the paper through the machine.  The operator can monitor output either on dedicated screens (on the highest end models), or on a monitor via PC attached to the scanner. 

The scanners are capable of dealing with documents of variable size throughout one scan run, as optical sensors detect edges of pages.  Document skew is corrected “on the fly” to produce high quality images.  As might be expected, maintenance and repair can be costly, with most bureaux opting to take out maintenance contracts on their equipment. 

On high-volume runs, cleanliness of the camera lenses and feeder rollers require close scrutiny, as dirt can cause poor quality images and problems with document feeding.  Dirt on the camera lens would show up as a dark continuous line on each scanned image. 

Many higher-end models of scanner include document imprinter/counters, which mark each paper document with a “serial number” as it is scanned through the machine.  This serial number show up on the scanned image and helps locate a particular sheet in times of query – especially handy when scanning 100,000 images per day!.  There is also one specific type of scanner which is not equipped for speed, but for ease of use when scanning a book.  This type of scanner includes a mechanism for turning and holding book pages, along with a highly specialist camera, allowing books to be scanned at relatively high speed yet without resorting to destroying the binding of the books as would be necessary to process the pages through a traditional high-speed scanner. 

The high speed of such scanners requires a fast interface to the host computer, meaning that the USB interface used for home scanning equipment is inadequate.  In these cases, an SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) cable connects the scanner to the host PC, which is equipped with a dedicated SCSI interface card.

Check back for the latest information, articles and reviews...