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Frequently Asked Questions
Volume
Operator
Scan Reliability
Image Quality
Material
Who are your competitors?
Per page cost
What is the expected MSTF (Mean Scans to Failure) of the APT
1200?
What are the likely failures?
What do you expect the pages scanned for the lifetime of the
unit to be?
What is the maximum volume/year?
What is the expected lifetime of the machine?
A: Our projected MTBF is between 200-300 hours. At a net throughput of 1,000 scans per hour, the MSTF would come to about 200-300K.
To date we haven’t identified any lead indicators of possible failures. Likely failures points may be:
- A couple of motors that we know are specified for only 1,000 hours. We are seeking to replace them with longer life motors,
-
The clamps and the pickup vacuum head. However, these
are designed to be CRU’s (customer replaceable units).
Lifetime: We’ve designed the machine to work for 5 million cycles (or 10 million pages scanned), which amounts to 5 years at 1 shift per day. With contract maintenance, parts will be replaced to ensure machine availability until a future (announced) determination of end of life or platform obsolescence.
What is the level of skill and training required to operate
the device?
What degree of operator supervision is required?
A: The level of skill required is about the same as for changing toner cartridges in copiers and printers. Training, including image processing, shouldn’t exceed 4 hours. More training, however, will be appropriate for image quality (IQ) optimization and quality control. We have little data at this time for training time associated with IQ optimization and quality control, but estimate 8-16 hours would be enough.
What is the observed mis-scan rate (skipped or repeated pages)?
A: Our page turning accuracy specification is 1 error per 1,000 pages. The observed rate is less than that - depending somewhat on the book. When turn failures happen, they are usually multi-feeds while scanning the first or last pages of a book. A multi-feed detection option will be available for books that have sticky pages.
What is the observed Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) and
spatial distortion?
Maximum resolution and bit depth?
Color Modes?
A: MTF is essentially that of the digital camera and the lens we use. We will be posting our optics MTF at different resolutions on our web site shortly.
Our resolution is determined directly by the size of the camera chip relative to the size of the pages in a book. For a 16.6 megapixel camera, such as the one currently used on the APT 1200, the maximum resolution would be about 600 dpi for 4.5” x 7” (the smallest book size) and decreasing to about 300 dpi for the 11” x 14” book (maximum allowed size).
The cameras we use are all RGB 36 bit depth (12 bit per channel). The state-of-the-art internal digital camera processor, such as the Canon DIGIC II, renders excellent quality, low noise images at all resolutions.
A feature that is unique to the APT 1200 is that the digitization speed for full color images is the same as in grayscale. Indeed the APT 1200 is the only “scanner” in the world where color comes at no productivity cost!
How does your technology perform on the various bindings such
as staple, sewn and glue?
How effective is it at flattening pages either physically
or in software?
If done by software, what is the effect on the MTF?
Can the unit scan unbound material?
A: The APT 1200 works with perfect bound (sewn and glued) and magazines. Three-hole binders seem to work fine as well, although we’ve done only very limited testing. We haven’t tested any stapled material yet.
We’re also finding we can turn loose pages with some straightforward modifications to our firmware. Page flattening is currently exclusively mechanical, via the V-shaped cradle and the side clamping.
Where printed matter encroaches the gutter, we sometimes observe some slight curvature. Future image processing software versions will correct those curvatures automatically.
What is the difference between your technology and, for instance, Digibook or the Digitizing Line from 4DigitalBooks?
A: Most of our competition offer manual only book scanners. The Digibook, made by I2S has the best combination of imaging and post-processing software, but remains a manual book scanner nonetheless.
The only other automated book scanner is the Digitizing Line by the Swiss company 4DigitalBooks. Its per unit price is double ours; its weight (1,600) pounds is 10 times more than ours; they advise that it's the size of a Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV), but we can fit 4 Kirtas machines inside an SUV! It has a flat cradle, inappropriate for fragile books; requires a heavy and potentially dangerous glass to flatten the pages, requires a dedicated operator to watch it, and achieves only 300 pages per hour in color mode. Their unit requires three phase, 32 AMP electrical service and generates an inordinate amount of heat.
Over the lifetime of the device, what is your estimated cost per page?
A: The cost per page will depend on several parameters such as number of shifts, level of maintenance contract, labor cost and operator Efficiency. Our cost analysis, based on a 2-shift, 5 day/week operation with 90% machine availability, suggests that the cost per page will be less than 3¢ per page.
Please contact us at info@kirtas.com, and a Kirtas representative will be glad to answer any additional questions.