DIY Braille Labeler
April 16, 2008 2:45 PM Subscribe
How can I make a DIY Braille label maker?
Looking for plans, ideas or research directions. Braille labelers are more then a thousand dollars...
Looking for plans, ideas or research directions. Braille labelers are more then a thousand dollars...
If you don't mind labeling by hand, you can occasionally find old Perkins braillers on ebay for a couple hundred, sometimes less.
posted by lovecrafty at 4:25 PM on April 16, 2008
posted by lovecrafty at 4:25 PM on April 16, 2008
Perkins School for the Blind sells "Dymo" tape, and slates and stylii. They sell "single line" slates, but they are awkward to use; a regular slate with a slot for labeling works best. You'll have to learn to read braille backwards, but you wouldn't be the only one. Good luck.
posted by Melismata at 4:58 PM on April 16, 2008
posted by Melismata at 4:58 PM on April 16, 2008
Response by poster: Ideally it would be like a P-touch labeler, where the keys are labeled in type and raised braille and the device prints on an adhesive strip with the embossed braille font. On the other side of the spectrum would be a mechanical device with dialed knobs (labeled in both) and a trigger that creates the punch-in on the strip. Integrating the technology with a modified inkjet printer would allow for printing of full pages. Maybe the process doesn't have to be mechanical, but use a chemical, heat, electric reaction to produce the protrusions or get rid of them.
posted by andrewyakovlev at 5:14 PM on April 16, 2008
posted by andrewyakovlev at 5:14 PM on April 16, 2008
Embossing Powder from any source will probably meet your needs. It needs wet ink to stick to, so you more than likely will want to go to some sort of stationary or art/craft paper store and ask them about a paper that's less permeable. Paper stores tend to have a somewhat knowledgeable staff that could help you. After you print using a braille converter or braille font, just sprinkle the powder on and apply heat.
posted by piedmont at 9:48 PM on April 16, 2008
posted by piedmont at 9:48 PM on April 16, 2008
I assume you mean a computer-driven label printer, because I found a manual one for twenty bucks on eBay.
A braille embosser for Dymo tape sounds like the sort of thing some Lego nuts would tackle in an evening or two. Might take a few custom-machined parts to get the dots in the right positions. Your local high school robotics team has exactly the right sort of brains to throw at this project. And it'd look great on a transcript, they should jump at the idea.
If I had the machining capabilities, I know how I'd build one: Since there are only three vertical positions in which dots can appear, I'd use an eight-sided turret, with the seven possible combinations on its faces. (The eighth face, representing no dots, would have a cutting blade.) The turret would be rotated into position by a servo, not unlike a daisy-wheel printer. The turret would be forced towards the die by a cam or crank mechanism, and the label tape would be advanced by a pair of pinch rollers. If unattended operation were desired, an "out of tape" sensor and a turret-jam sensor would be appropriate.
The software would only need a couple adjustable parameters: How much tape to feed between adjacent columns in the same letter (feed-roller wear could cause this to drift over time), how much to feed between adjacent letters, and how much unprinted space to leave before/after a cut. For bonus points, there could be an option to short-cycle the cutter so it would score the tape but not sever it completely, making strips of snap-apart labels. The depth of cut required to produce acceptable scoring would vary with the type of tape, so this would need to be configurable too. Although a thumbscrew adjustment would work just as well.
A potential mechanical improvement: Instead of the turret containing the embossing points directly, it could force "pushrods" which would do the actual embossing. Those rods could live in a rigid guide structure attached to the die, which would give more consistent positioning for "cleaner" characters. The tape-cutter may be awkward in this design.
posted by Myself at 11:29 PM on April 16, 2008
A braille embosser for Dymo tape sounds like the sort of thing some Lego nuts would tackle in an evening or two. Might take a few custom-machined parts to get the dots in the right positions. Your local high school robotics team has exactly the right sort of brains to throw at this project. And it'd look great on a transcript, they should jump at the idea.
If I had the machining capabilities, I know how I'd build one: Since there are only three vertical positions in which dots can appear, I'd use an eight-sided turret, with the seven possible combinations on its faces. (The eighth face, representing no dots, would have a cutting blade.) The turret would be rotated into position by a servo, not unlike a daisy-wheel printer. The turret would be forced towards the die by a cam or crank mechanism, and the label tape would be advanced by a pair of pinch rollers. If unattended operation were desired, an "out of tape" sensor and a turret-jam sensor would be appropriate.
The software would only need a couple adjustable parameters: How much tape to feed between adjacent columns in the same letter (feed-roller wear could cause this to drift over time), how much to feed between adjacent letters, and how much unprinted space to leave before/after a cut. For bonus points, there could be an option to short-cycle the cutter so it would score the tape but not sever it completely, making strips of snap-apart labels. The depth of cut required to produce acceptable scoring would vary with the type of tape, so this would need to be configurable too. Although a thumbscrew adjustment would work just as well.
A potential mechanical improvement: Instead of the turret containing the embossing points directly, it could force "pushrods" which would do the actual embossing. Those rods could live in a rigid guide structure attached to the die, which would give more consistent positioning for "cleaner" characters. The tape-cutter may be awkward in this design.
posted by Myself at 11:29 PM on April 16, 2008
Response by poster: Thank you all! These are great leads.
posted by andrewyakovlev at 8:27 AM on April 18, 2008
posted by andrewyakovlev at 8:27 AM on April 18, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by 0xFCAF at 3:20 PM on April 16, 2008