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

Wed Aug 10 16:56:38 UTC 2011

Hi John, welcome back to this side of the Atlantic.

Now if you could just figure out how to package the Tiger in a
price/weight/size/power range of a low-cost HP Laptop, everyone could have
economical access to your IVEO Learning System. Well maybe asking for
battery power is asking a little too much...<grin>

Dick Baldwin

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 11:40 AM, John Gardner <john.gardner at orst.edu>wrote:

> 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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-- 
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/