[Blindmath] great question...Re: Economical tactile graphics - Microcapsule or Swell Paper in a microwave oven?

Wed Aug 10 16:40:57 UTC 2011

Richard, the trick to swell paper is the differential absorption of IR light
by the dark and light regions.  This is critical.  In fact, many printers
will not give adequate copy - they must print with certain black inks that
have an absorption band in the right region, and many black inks apparently
do not.  So no heat source that does not flood the paper with IR light is
gonna work.  Sorry.

One can imagine a home-made system employing an IR heat lamp, which can be
purchased for a few dollars.  I know that this has been tried by various
tinkerers, but it has not been made to work, because nobody can figure out
how to expose the full page to more or less uniform radiation of the correct
intensity from a single lamp or even several such lamps.  Moreover, one has
to be pretty careful not to get some portion of the paper too hot - if you
do, it catches fire.  Some of the less expensive swell paper "toasters" have
had an unfortunate tendency to catch fire.  As far as I know, none of these
are still on the market.

Commercial swell paper toasters use an IR heat bar wide enough to cover the
full width of the paper.  The radiation dose is controlled by the speed of
movement, and one finds the right speed by trial and error.  Swell paper is
notoriously non-reproducible to manufacture, and one often needs a bit of
trial and error for every new batch of paper.  Maybe modern papers are more
uniform than they once were though.

With practice one can learn to make pretty good swell paper graphics but it
is not trivial.  I never could make reliable swell paper tactiles - which
was one of the motivating forces to our invention of Tiger embossing
technology!  

John

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Richard Baldwin
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 9:06 AM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] great question...Re: Economical tactile graphics -
Microcapsule or Swell Paper in a microwave oven?

I just had another thought while communicating with another individual on
this topic.

My wife has a laminating machine that she uses to fuse documents between two
sheets of plastic with heat. I don't know how much she paid for it, but a
quick Google search shows laminating machines in the price range of $50 and
up. I'm guessing that the price increases with the size of the documents
that the machine can accommodate and perhaps the amount of control that the
user has over the fusing temperature.

I wonder if such a laminating machine could be used to toast the Swell Paper
at a price tag substantially less than $1500.

I would like to be able to produce medium quality tactile graphics in my
office at a cost that competes with the cost of a cheap ink-squirt printer
(exclusive of the cost of paper).

While the cost of Swell Paper will never compete with the cost of ordinary
printer paper, a huge increase in demand might bring the cost of Swell Paper
down to less than $1.00 per sheet.

Among its other advantages, the availability of convenient and low-cost
tactile graphics would open the door to the use of the IVEO Learning System
for tens of thousands of blind students who have no access to a Tiger
embossing machine. Lots of students and organizations that can't afford a
Tiger embossing machine could afford an IVEO touchpad to use with the free
IVEO Viewer software and a computer that they already own. (I have
successfully used the IVEO Viewer software with an old but small Wacom
digitizer pad with a USB interface and a stylus.)

While the quality of Swell Paper may not be close to the quality of the
Tiger output, the quality my be good enough to be used as a finger guide on
an IVEO touchpad. If so, the detailed information could be embedded in the
low-cost end of the process, which is to provide voice annotation in the SVG
file, instead of needing to embed it in the high-cost end of the process,
which is embossing the tactile graphic image.

I believe that once a large database of IVEO users is established, the folks
at ViewPlus could develop and sell an enhanced Viewer software package that
would contains many useful features that may not even have been thought of
yet, along with an enhanced IVEO Creator package to support those features.
That is one end of the scenario.

At the other end, an individual blind student who is willing to learn to
draw using SVG could create IVEO-compatible SVG files with little more than
a text editor and an idea.

It all hinges on making it possible for everyone involved to conveniently
and economically create tactile graphics. In my opinion, that is one key to
the future of STEM education for blind students.

End of sermon

Dick Baldwin

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 10:28 AM, kelly marts
<kellyvision at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

> Mr. Baldwin,
> I find this to be a question that has bothered me in the past year. I am a
> teacher of the visually impaired working in public schools. I have the
> luxury of
> working with skilled braillists that have the task of making our tactile
> graphics.
>
> We are using a Tiger system as well as swell paper. The cost of the swell
> paper
> is under 2 dollars per page. The cost of sheet fed braille paper is, I'm
> guessing, 5 cents per sheet.
>
>
> The swell paper requires a 1500 dollar machine to toast the paper
> and computer
> systems and graphics software that are readily available. The Tiger system
> has a
> 6000 to 10000 dollar cost initially. Training is provided. Again, the
> computer
> systems to generate the graphics are readily available.
>
>
> We use both. Which we use depends on the graphic and the experience of the
> braillist. I perfer the Tiger graphics for math and science materials in
> high
> school.
>
> This doesn't answer your question. I want to do a cost anaylsis though.
> Made me think.
> K
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Richard Baldwin <baldwin at dickbaldwin.com>
> To: BlindMath Mailing List <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Wed, August 10, 2011 10:02:52 AM
> Subject: [Blindmath] Economical tactile graphics - Microcapsule or Swell
> Paper
> in a microwave oven?
>
> I keep thinking that one of the big needs in teaching STEM courses to
blind
> students is the need to quickly, easily, and economically create tactile
> graphics from printed graphs and images.
>
> I have read about using Microcapsule or Swell Paper, which seems like a
> reasonable approach except that the heating devices are relatively
> expensive
> (more than the cost of an HP laptop) and not portable.
>
> Every teacher's lounge in K-12 and every student lounge in college has a
> microwave oven. Many faculty members have a microwave oven in their
office.
> Has anyone tried heating a printed piece of swell paper in a microwave
oven
> to see how it reacts?  If it doesn't react well by itself, would it help
to
> sandwich it between two pieces of the silver crisping cardboard that comes
> with frozen pizza? Or how about sandwiching it between two of the
> gel-filled
> pads that are designed to be heated in a microwave oven and then applied
to
> sore joints? That would tend to provide a more uniform heat to the surface
> of the paper. I have been unable to find any specifications regarding the
> temperature requirements for causing the microcapsules to swell.
>
> What can we do to dramatically improve the availability of custom-made
> tactile graphics?
>
> Is there a group or list that concentrates on such issues.  I found a list
> named Adapted Graphics for the blind and visually impaired (Adapted
> Graphics) but I was unable to navigate the interface to get registered,
and
> in any event, there didn't appear to be any recent posts in the archives?
>
> Dick Baldwin
>
> --
> Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
> Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
> http://www.DickBaldwin.com
>
> Professor of Computer Information Technology
> Austin Community College
> (512) 223-4758
> mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
> http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
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-- 
Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
http://www.DickBaldwin.com

Professor of Computer Information Technology
Austin Community College
(512) 223-4758
mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
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