CymScan Optical Drum Scanner

The Designing Concept

There are many articles about the proficiency of scanners, which often focus on describing the powerful packaged software used to remove the noise produced by the scanner. In fact, software cannot eliminate the noise. Software, in general, it can only alter the corrupted data signals to reduce the erosion done by the noise. Such alteration will cause irreversible erosion and even irretrievable loss of scanned detail from the original.

Noise, while scanning, is generated from electrical and electronic interferences, friction between the scanner's mechanical parts, as well as some unwarranted movement and vibration of the scanner itself. When noise, in the form of uncontrolled electronic signals, is picked up by the scanner's sensor, it will corrupt the original's data signals. Together, these incorrectly combined data signals will produce misinterpreted and inaccurate image pixels. As a consequence, the resulted scanned image will lose its sharpness, have disproportionate colours, be blurry, have speckles and decrease in shadow intensities.

Under these circumstances, for a scanner manufacturer to develop such an illusive function in the scanner's packaged scanning software is an ineffective and unprofitable expense for the users. Rather than create elusive scanning software package to compensate for the inferior design of the scanner, our company elected to put in more resources, such as incorporating industrial grade hardware and mechanical parts into major components of our scanners.

Our challenge

Drum Motor Design
Cym Graphics Inc. has developed the innovative Drum Motor System with the objective of minimizing the vibrations observed in the scanner. The system is driven directly on the rotary drum in order to minimize the noise produced from any connections between the Drum Motor and the rotary drum. The Drum Motor System is patent pending.

We avoided using rubber belts to propel the motor and rotary drum since they control these components indirectly by pushing the mount over the drum while it is spinning. Since the belts have no direct connection to the motor, they must be connected by a conjunction, which can lead to more vibrations. The belts create a lot of friction which ends up increasing the amount of noise. The friction also makes the belts susceptible to wear and tear, which can cause them to break. The vibrations will increase over time since the belts become more elastic with use. They may expand or contract due to temperature changes and the material of the belts may lead to an unbalanced rotation speed of the rotary drum.

Carrier System
The Carrier System is made of industrial-graded, heavy duty materials that minimize the vibrations caused while it is moving. We use industrial grade screws and sliders to focus the Carrier System's movement to ensure that the drum is moving evenly.

To use non-graded machining parts such as screw shafts, rails or sliders cannot guarantee that the Carrier System will be steadily held. When the Carrier System trembles as it moves, more friction will be created.

CymScan Navigator
The CymScan Navigator is a user-friendly and very capable program that can make the scanning process very easy. Its greatest feature is its ability to be a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop as a real-time multitasking application. Our plug-in allows the user to access every function of the Photoshop program properly, providing the user with a fully functional colour modification program without incurring any extra costs.