Drum scanner support...

[Capocheny]

Out of curiosity, what do most of you drum scanner have it sitting on?

When that drum is spinning I'm sure it would have to be sitting on something pretty heavy and stable.

Ours will be sitting on wooden floors and I'm wondering whether it might not be a good idea to buy a slab of marble 1 or 2 inches thick for the scanner to sit on.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks

Cheers

[bob carnie]

Good Point

I took the hard drive off the table the scanner was sitting on for this very reason.

[Ted Harris]

My scanners sit on dedicated heavy steel industrial tables.

[Bruce Watson]

Out of curiosity, what do most of you drum scanner have it sitting on?

When that drum is spinning I'm sure it would have to be sitting on something pretty heavy and stable.

Ours will be sitting on wooden floors and I'm wondering whether it might not be a good idea to buy a slab of marble 1 or 2 inches thick for the scanner to sit on.

Any thoughts on this?

Adding a marble slab under a drum scanner is largely pointless. All it would do is lower the natural frequency a tiny bit and the design of most any drum scanner renders this moot. Getting it off the floor however would be a good idea. Floors are dirty and dusty and drum scanners typically pull a fair amount of air through the machine while running (mine generates around 900W of waste heat in operation). Getting the air intake out of the dirt and dust zone is a good idea.

Vibration control is built into drum scanners. Otherwise they would be pretty worthless. How well this is done varies from scanner to scanner of course. Typically the frames are cast aluminum. The drums are balanced and very stiff; vibration while the drum is spinning is vanishingly small. The stepper motors are fairly powerful and fairly quick; they complete their "step" and settle out while the drum traverses its calibration zone. IOW, the typical drum scanner sees more noise and vibration from it's internal components than transmitted in from the outside, and this vibration is accounted for in the design.

Best practice is to find a big sturdy table and put the drum scanner in the middle with plenty of room around it so you can work with it and so that it has unrestricted air flow. Keep the table clean -- no stacking of papers or boxes on this table. The point is to keep the scanner and its environs clean. Vibration control is built in, but you control cleanliness.

[IanMazursky]

Some years ago when I was running an optronics, i went to home depot and bout some cabinets and a formica covered table top.
It was great for the optronics since it has allot of steel inside and was fairly self dampened.
The drum rotation was also pretty slow and the drum was very small compared to the large drum of the howtek.

Then I bought my howtek 7500. To my eye, it was moving across the table. Scared the hell out of me.
So I went to a local NYC plastic place and they sold me some 1" open cell rubber pads.
Supposedly, they are used for dampening industrial machinery.
The pads really make a difference but some small vibrations still makes it past the 6 pads. Its not that bad and I dont worry about it.

I agree with Bruce, if I could do it all over again, I would go for a very sturdy table and not cabinets.
Although they are very convenient for drum and mylar storage. Either way you go I would recommend the dampening pads.
They have really helped reduce the vibration to the table and they also have raised the scanner a bit so its easier to get the drums in!

[Capocheny]

Thanks for all the comments... an industrial table with rubber padding it will be!

Cheers