Any good uses for a flatbed scanner?

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

I'm getting rid of an all-in-one inkjet printer + scanner, and I was wondering if there's some good use to be made of the scanner portion.

Turning it into a plate reader obviously comes to mind (see Microscale Colorimetric Analysis Using a Desktop Scanner and Automated Digital Image Analysis),  but I find it hard to justify using a flatbed scanner if a cheap webcam can essentially achieve the same these days. (That's why I'm getting rid of the scanner in the first place - can't remember the last time I actually had to scan a document; I just take a picture with my smartphone these days...)

Other suggestions? I assume this thing has a linear RGB CCD element that could potentially be used for spectroscopy...

Patrik

[Cory Tobin]

The 2010 Duke iGEM team used a flatbed scanner to measure gene
expression (lacZ) in E. coli colonies growing on solid media. If you
can fit the scanner inside an incubator you can program the scanner to
take a picture every X minutes and measure expression over time. Some
scanners are easier to automate than others.

http://2010.igem.org/Team:Duke/Project#Design_2
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v29/n5/full/nbt.1847.html

-cory

[leaking pen]

homemade laser cutter?

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[Barry degger]

If you keep it intact Timed scans of petri dish for growth curve..

Otherwise YouTube has heaps of teardowns of printers and instructibles lots of building from scavanged electronics and mechanical assemblages.

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