Scanner / Shredder
I’ve been thinking about this one for a while… A household shredder that scans at the same time. Used to archive memorabilia such as children’s artwork, new clippings, etc… without having to find appropriate places to store them.
It would accept paper up to 24″ wide, with varying thicknesses, so it could accommodate all sorts of messy mixed-media hand-painted creations. The shredder would viciously tear apart these treasures in seconds, but keep them preserved with care via an SD card, with an internal memory backup just in case. A USB jack would enable the shredder to be connected to a PC for quick download of memory contents. The shredder would not function unless the memory card was in place, so nothing could be shreeded unintentionally.
Shredding would be slower than other shredders, to allow time for scanning. Scanning mechanism would be similar to that of a fax machine, with a high-res color CCD. The mechanism would need to be designed to grip the artwork and carry it through the scanner steadily, and able to maintain focus on crumpled, torn, or messy pieces of art, with internal self-cleaning cycles to wipe away paper bits, glitter, macaroni noodles, etc…
Color-coded buttons at the top could be used to assigned custom tags to the item being scanned, so “green” might be kid’s artwork, and “blue” might be news clippings, etc…
Category: Inventions 6 comments »
October 17th, 2009 at 5:00 am
I love you.
I have thought of this idea independantly, awesome to see it in another person’s mind. It would be great to see a machine that deals with creating a digital copy and getting rid of the original in one easy step.
Hell I’d like to see a relatively easy to use scanner that feeds documents automatically, rather than the tedious process of using a flatbed scanner.
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:14 am
I Googled “scanner shredder” hoping to find a product I could buy and all I found was a couple of sites with ‘ideas’. This would be so incredibly useful for all my bills, bank statements, everything I receive in the mail. Why doesn’t it already exist?!
February 18th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Just keep in mind that if the kids may use it, the width of the opening on the shredder should not be too wide so their fingers can get stuck. I know of a real incident where it happened and the kid lost her finger.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Yes safety would be key – the slot where paper goes in would probably be about 1/8″ high, and the actual shredding hardware would be far removed from the entry, as the paper must pass by the scanner first.
February 24th, 2010 at 12:45 am
We presented this idea to Fellowes in 2003 to no avail…funny part was no outside designers had met with their shredder group ever!
February 26th, 2010 at 1:00 am
Seems like this is one of those inevitable things… Hopefully someone will bring it to market,