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Poster: brewster Date: Mar 22, 2003 3:16am
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Bookmobile technology and status

The Internet Archive is doing a few things to refine bookmobile tech:
* Ashley is running the current bookmobile around to see who might step forward to support bookmobiles. (lots of nibbles, no takers in the US yet)
* printing tech: the HP gear is expensive for printing color books. dont have a good alternative there. Looking at b/w printers, but run into the problem that we need booklet mode. going ok, but need better/cheaper tech there.
* binding tech: we shifted to the powis parker model 15 binder. bigger and heavier, but binds really well and quickly. about $4k retail for the binder. the manufacturer will come out with a smaller cheaper version, but that seems to always be 3 months away
* book scanning: we are shipping 100k books to india to be scanned by the million book project. dont know when these will be back.
* we have a directory structure that we like (see http://texts02.archive.org ) that hopefully allow us to have distributed scanning, catalogging, covermaking, conversions done in a controlled way. Pooja is populating this now with gutenberg and books that have been scanned. volunteers are needed here.
* trying to get covers automatically made using the catalog and using openoffice format. this has been a bit of a struggle, but jp massar is working on this.
* and other stuff on copyright and catalogging fronts.

So things are moving, but we could definitely use volunteer help on almost every piece.

-brewster

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Poster: mwoodwar Date: Mar 28, 2003 5:32am
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Re: Bookmobile technology and status

Has anyone looked at the Lexmark T420d? It prints at 22ppm, duplexes, has a 50,000 page duty cycle, and is selling for 749.00 at PC Connection with an extra 32 meg of ram?

It is monochrome, but I am thinking that for this project, monochrome may be the most appropriate method except perhaps for the cover.

Mark

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Poster: brewster Date: Mar 30, 2003 7:27am
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Lexmart printer and booklet mode


We find "booklet mode" very helpful in making books. Lexmart's laser printers dont seem to support this. (they have an inkjet line, but that is too slow).

the other good feature is ethernet.

Panasonic makes a great $430 duplexing ethernet laser, but it does not have booklet mode so we sent it back.

-brewster

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Poster: Rick Bender Date: Apr 24, 2003 5:23pm
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Re: Lexmart printer and booklet mode

What kind of cover stock are you using? I'm curious because I tried making books at home using craft glue which works surprisingly well. But unless using expensive, thick photo paper for inkjets I don't get good quality covers. What paper exactly are you using for the covers? Do you have lettering on the spine?

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Poster: brewster Date: Apr 25, 2003 2:56am
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Re: Lexmart printer and booklet mode

We use 80lb cover stock (this is different from 80lb paper, confusingly). we use a powis parker binder that does perfect binding.

the cover stock goes through the external paper path (not the internal tray because it is heavier than can go around the corners in the printer).

-brewster

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Poster: davidk Date: Mar 22, 2003 9:03pm
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Re: Bookmobile technology and status

can I help at all from Italy?

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Poster: digitaldallas Date: Jul 17, 2007 3:29pm
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Re: Bookmobile technology and status

Hello:

Black & White is the only way to go as far as keeping your costs down at this point on the guts(internal pages). We have a color digital press that is made for commercial printing and our consumable costs(ink, blanket,etc.)per 12 x18 sheet is .09 per side. You will have a hard time getting to that with any type of printer and that does not include the cost of the actual machine or maintenance.

As a reference you would struggle to get to .25-.30 per page for color but you should be able to get to .01 per page for black & white. Just thought it might help to have some cost insights. If you could get into the right PR or marketing person on this I would think you could get a company to donate a printer for the publicity you could give them.

Good Luck.

Buzz
The Odee Company - Digital Color Printing Services
http://www.odeecompany.com/digital-color-printing.asp

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Poster: brewster Date: Jul 18, 2007 9:14am
Forum: bookmobile Subject: Re: Bookmobile technology and status


You are right. for all the books the Internet Archive is making we are producing a monochrome version for printing on b/w printers for this exact reason.

we hope they will be useful.

-brewster