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From: John Gardner <gardner@zircon.physics.orst.edu>
Subject: Tactile Techniques
To: tvc@iglou.com
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 94 8:26:18 PST
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.25]
Status: RO
X-Status:
November 28, 1994
Tim, I have been following the NFB research group discussions on tactile
graphics with considerable interest. As an observr of the list I don't want
to intrude by posting directly, but you are welcome to post this letter if
you want.
As you know, since you were there, my research group sponsored a symposium in
March on the subject of high resolution tactile graphics. There were several
talks by researchers using or developing methods that should be interesting
to people on this list.
It has taken a long time, but we now have transcripts derived from audio
recordings of that symposium. They are presently available by anonymous ftp
in ftp://dots.physics.orst.edu/pub/tactile-symposium. I have sent the files
to the authors for final editing and have not yet received all back, so
several of the files are a bit rough. TRACE Center will post these
proceedings, but they are having some computer problems at the moment.
Within a couple of weeks these proceedings should be available from
trace.wisc.edu.
You mentioned looking into the hot pen. Its inventor, Dr. Juergen Loetzsch,
tried it for plotting on swell paper, and one of my students has also used it
on a plotter. It works but takes forever. You can get ordering info from
Loetzsch. He has no e mail address but can be reached by FAX in Dresden at
(49 351) 478 53 42. I do not know if he presently has an American
distributor.
We have begun using swell paper in research because our Pixelmaster printers
are barely working. The Reprotronics fuser works reasonably well. Our major
problem has been finding an easy method of printing on the swell paper. We
would like to print directly from the computer, but we have found no laser
printer that does not heat the paper enough to cause at least some slight
swelling - and as a consequence, the final output has a rough background.
Fast copiers do not swell the paper, but beware using copiers with
complicated paper paths. The swell paper is thick and jams the copier
easily. We had a $500 service call to remove swell paper from our department
copier.
Reprotronics expects to introduce swell paper that is better and less
expensive than the present paper. Samples of the new paper were shown at
Closing the Gap, and it was reportedly very nice. There are rumors that
other companies will also be manufacturing swell paper. Unless somebody
finds a new process, the manufacturing costs will keep the price high
however.
I have been interested in hearing of your search for innovative ways to
emboss graphics. There have been some good ideas. I have learned from
experience that overlapping dots using a punch and die will not work. It
tears the paper. A punch and rubber backing device, which has been the
object of several discussions, would probably fare better. This method is
used in the least expensive Blazie braille printers and produces dots that
are less crisp than the punch and die printers, but it might be capable of
printing overlapping dots without tearing the paper. A couple of years ago
I suggested that Blazie experiment a bit to see if overlapping dots on those
printers would work and, if so, consider modifying the printer to allow
printing in a very high resolution mode. It would take a long time to print
a page, but it might just work. I don't know whether they tried this idea or
not.
Good luck.
John Gardner
gardner@physics.orst.edu
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