Automatic Sheet Feeders on all-in-one printers, questions

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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I'm talking about the device on some AIOs which pulls in sheets to scan for you, the idea being that you can tell it to scan a multi-page document without having to go through a tedious cycle of 'put one sheet in, scan it, take it out, put next sheet in', etc.

I do a fair bit of scanning because I scan in almost all of the paperwork I receive (that I need to keep), so if there are ways to speed up the work or make it less tedious, I'm interested in it.

When a scan is done from the ADF, is the saved result always A4? Or are clever things done like the 'auto sense content' type stuff that scanning software can do when scanning from glass (or is this implemented with the pre-scan only?).

Do ADFs handle custom-size sheets of paper reasonably well? Amazon for example sometimes does an A4 receipt or a weird size that's smaller than A5.

I realise that both of my questions are probably dependent on the implementation, but I would like to know peoples' experiences on this topic.
 

tortillasoup

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2011
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I just used a paper feeder on an older Epson 1200U scanner it worked reasonably well after I cleaned up all the rollers/cork areas. (It was grabbing 2 papers at a time, pulling unevenly, jamming, not picking up papers etc. prior to cleaning the stuff with a lint free cloth + simple water.

As for scanned paper size, that's up to the software. My software didn't auto detect the size of the paper, so I had to specify the size paper to be scanning. Every scanning device is different so some may be more advanced than others. The only physical adjustment my feeder had was for the width of the paper but otherwise the scanned picture would just show a huge white background had I specified the scan area to match the paper size.

So if I feed a 8.5X11 paper and it thinks I'm scanning 8.5X14, the scanned image will show an 8.5X14 image with a bunch of white space at the bottom.
 

alkemyst

No Lifer
Feb 13, 2001
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OP, you have to set it up in software or most of the time it will use the smallest size for the scan (to save memory/document sizes). Tell it everything should be scanned as letter-sized and that should do it.

When I was in banking, we'd scan 10,000's of documents per day. Our software was set to detect everything as letter or legal only.
 

tortillasoup

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2011
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OP, you have to set it up in software or most of the time it will use the smallest size for the scan (to save memory/document sizes). Tell it everything should be scanned as letter-sized and that should do it.

When I was in banking, we'd scan 10,000's of documents per day. Our software was set to detect everything as letter or legal only.

What did you use for scanning all of those documents? Sounds like that's a fast reader!
 

alkemyst

No Lifer
Feb 13, 2001
83,769
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81
I don't remember the exact model but it was from Hitachi and it used a conveyor belt and had vacuum. We also used Canon File scanner which were really fast as well.
 

Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,313
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On my Epson WF-3540, I just set what options I want before I scan, then click scan and it scans all the docs in the feeder using the same settings. In general, ADF doesn't work well with different sized pieces of paper in the same scan. There is I guide that you can set on the feeder if all the pages are the same size, but I would think different size pieces in the same scan would cause jams, or misaligned scans. And you can also choose what source you want to scan from, so either flatbed or ADF.

And if you plan on doing a lot of scanning, look into an ADF with duplex. That means scanning both sides of a page. On my scanner it works well enough. Definitely a time saver.
 

SMOGZINN

Lifer
Jun 17, 2005
14,337
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When a scan is done from the ADF, is the saved result always A4? Or are clever things done like the 'auto sense content' type stuff that scanning software can do when scanning from glass (or is this implemented with the pre-scan only?).
The scanner passes the image to the system as standard sized image, from there it is all about what your software does with it.

Do ADFs handle custom-size sheets of paper reasonably well? Amazon for example sometimes does an A4 receipt or a weird size that's smaller than A5.
In my experience, no. I scan a lot of different stuff, and recently finished a project that had me scan in about 5000 photos, and I've found that my Brother AIO scanner handles several standard paper sizes reasonably, but if there is a lot of difference in the weight of the scanned paper, or size it messes up too often to be reliable. In the end I sat next to it and fed it one item at a time for a few days.

My recommendation is if you are going to do a lot of scanning then you probably want a dedicated scanner and not an AIO.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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As I've had a long line of good experiences with Epson, I've got myself the WF-3520DWF.

The general consensus was that the ADF wouldn't handle the custom-size sheets well, which for the Amazon receipts is true. The first one I tried ended up in an ADF jam. The second warped the scan as the sheet evidently got stuck for a bit then freed itself.

After a bit of testing, I found that it scanned greyscale quicker than colour (which is fine for scanning my paperwork, its main job), and it made very short work of about 20 sheets of A4 (which I inserted in groups of five sheets, and as people have said, it wants them nicely kinked out and straight).

Thanks for the suggestions. I had to get a new printer anyway (my wife needed her own so I gave mine up, and this printer has identical cartridges to the old one), so the ADF is a "handy if it works, but not a show stopper if it doesn't" feature. I'm pleased with the results so far, if the ADF works then it makes scanning paperwork a lot less tedious.

One piece of advice I would give for people considering ADF is that if you're scanning in say a document you've received in the post (my situation was my business bank statement, 5 sheets), it's been folded in half, and I believe the fold causes the ADF to try pulling in another sheet before the first one was done, so my first attempt missed off the first 5cm of the remaining sheets. I folded the fold in the opposite direction, but generally speaking my paperwork sits under a paper weight normally for a while before I try to scan it in anyway.
 
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Waldo

Member
Oct 9, 1999
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www.kuzasneu.com
It's not an all-in-one printer, but I use the Fujitsu Scan snap series in my office, and it is awesome. Fast, one touch button, saves in whatever format you want, and ocr's the pdfs. Effortless, and comes with a good software stack if you need it.
 

dbcooper1

Senior member
May 22, 2008
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If you intend to use it on a regular basis for more than a few pages at a time, it's best to go with a scanner only device. Auto feeding is largely dependent on the leading edge of the pages being consistent and condition of the feed and separating rollers. I've used several scanners over the years and software is key to post imaging processing and sizing. I've found that with the scanner driver and a copy of Adobe Acrobat v8 or later works best for my needs; it scans directly to pdf format and can even do OCR on the fly so your docs are text searchable, which has come in handy on many occasions.
 
Feb 25, 2011
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I've had a a Brother MFC-J6920DW for two weeks, and I've put a few hundred sheets through it. (I bought it for the scanner, really.)

Assuming it's representative of lower cost consumer all-in-ones, there isn't much to complain about with regards to the ADF. For the price, anyway. This isn't professional-grade equipment. (It is, however, just about the cheapest way possible to get A3 scanning capability at all, let alone sheet fed A3 scanning.)

Even super-expensive scanners are pretty stupid about page sizes - I worked in document services for years and was never particularly happy with the "auto detect" settings on anything but letter/legal/tabloid (A4/A3). I'd much rather tell the scanner to scan everything a size too big, and then crop it in Adobe or something after the fact.

You're probably going to have to scan some 2-sided stuff sooner rather than later. If you can, get a single-pass duplex capable scanner. Some duplexers draw the page back in, flip it over, and run it through again, which can be hazardous with certain paper types. (Paper that is ragged on one edge, torn out of a spiral notebook, that sort of thing.) Heavy card stock also HATES flipping in a duplexer. Single-pass avoids this by scanning both sides at once. It also tends to be faster.