Document Scanning Equipment

Your choice of Document scanning equipment is based on two important factors - Scanning requirements and budget.

Unlike 6-7 years ago today there are many document scanners to chose from, all producing exceptional quality and come with a variety of features.

When deciding on a scanner consider:

1) Space - how much room do you have or your scanner. Some scanners are far larger than people imagine and can take up a great deal of room.

2) Type of documents. Decide what type of documents you will be scanning. Will these all be A4 lose pages or will you.

3) Black White / Colour -

4) How many documents will you be scanning per day/week. There is little point in spending huge amounts of money on a scanner if you are only scanning 100 pages per day.

5) Budget - What is your budget?
Think of ongoing costs to. Maintenance and parts are often forgotten.

All produce a full range of different scanners to fit any requirements, from flatbed scanners for books and difficult to scan documents, to ADF Scanners (Auto document Feed) scanners for high volume fast scanning which will allow you to scan hundreds or several thousands documents per day.

Flatbed Scanners

Flatbed scanners are designed for books and large delicate documents.
The flatbed allows you to open the top of the scanner and place the document face down directly on the glass.
Flatbeds are extremely popular because of the control they give you over the placing of the document.
Flatbeds are generally the most costs effective of scanners because they don't have the added expense of the complex rollers and feeders of the ADF unit

* Delicate documents.
* Books and bound pages can be laid flat without having to separate or remove its binding.

ADF Scanners

ADF Scanners are designed for documents, which will feed through the scanner. This allows you to scan many hundreds of pages automatically with little user intervention

Documents are simply placed in a stack on the document scanners feeder tray documents are then drawn in the scanner automatically by a series of rollers.

ADF are more expensive due to the mechanical differences over a flatbed

* High volume scanning.
* The documents must be suitable for the Feeder.

ADF & Flatbed

Some scanners such as the ones shown below from Epson and Bell and Howell can operate both as a flatbed and an ADF, which provides the user with the best of both worlds.

On the top they have the ADF (Auto Document Feeder) facility whilst they also open up allow the user to place documents directly on the scanner glass for flat bed scanning of books and more difficult documents which will not feed through the ADF
These are ideal where the user has a mixture of document types.

*Complete Flexibility & Control

The main manufacturers of document scanners are:

Kodak
Canon
Fujitsu
Bell and Howell
Lexmark
Ricoh
Epson
Lexmark
Umax
HP