A few months ago, I shared a scanner hack I found on the nets. A few weeks ago, I finally finished modifying a Cannon Lide 90 I bought on ebay using a Dremel saw. Dremel tools are much less powerful than I had hoped. The sawing took almost a half a day and I never did bother with sanding the edges of the plastic to make them smooth. Anyway, I had some initial trouble with the scanner falling off the track and once I got that back in securely, I was mostly ok – minus the always annoying download of drivers on ancient laptops we have around the house.
To scan one pattern it took around 70 scans. That’s much more labor intensive than I had hoped! The results look fairly good, although, I’m curious what the process for printing and piecing together will be like.
By playing with the contrast and brightness I was able to bring the gray tone down a bit, which should help with ink when printing. I might need to play with the settings a bit more until I can fully do away with that light gray shadow over the whole page.
I like the idea of digitizing my patterns, but honestly this much more work than simply tracing them. I may have to re-think my strategy…
