How Can I Convert Micro Fiche to Digital

Without knowing where you are specific info is difficult. Just about any print shop should be able to do this. They can at least turn them into PDF files so you can look at them.

Google "digitizing microfiche".

I'm in western Colorado, US. Thank you for the print shop info. I didn't realize they could do this without a reader, and my reader is as old as the hills and been through alot, ie screen scratches etc.

First place I ran across with Google says they charge somewhere between 5 and 8 cents per page. That seems to be pretty affordable - but shop around. May be better prices elsewhere.

You can buy your own reader for like $50 on eBay. Printers can be quite a bit more - say $75 - $300 (depending on how much you'd like to gamble pay). Plus you'll have maintenance costs.

It's probably somewhat inconvenient, but if you're just wanting this for the occasional reference many public libraries and community / technical colleges have microfiche readers you can use for free and can print from at a small fee.

I have the reader, but it's old like me and just isn't up to snuff anymore. And it doesn't take care of the print needs, so maybe I'll check with a local print shop and compare prices.

Thanks

A good film scanner and adobe pro photoshop should manage it pretty good.

I have been able to pull part numbers off of old film negatives (photos of my dads farm machinery when it was new) using this method.

Hey wizards1strule,

Welcome to CR4. I'm not sure if we have a welder repair person, "on staff" or not, but we do have welding related questions all the time. So, sooner or later you'll have a chance to help someone with their welder problems.

Good luck with the translation.

Hi lynch,

Yes I've run into a few of the welder/welding questions before and am glad to help. I'm also an engine mechanic, so I help whenever I can. So much like your doing now.

Again, thank you

My scanner can produce digital images from negatives and can assume it would work for your application too. I would suggest going to Canon's website for help in this matter.

Try FedEx ... they bought out kinkos ... they were competitive on converting my slides ... they were 4 dollars more expensive (on 100 slides) on the price but 10 dollars closer ... If you know what I mean.

If you have some one with an old photo enlarger you could "print" you some master copies and scan them in to your computer.

I think several people are looking at this method.

The company that did a lot of micro fiche for the construction industry is F.W.Dodge aka. The Dodge house, they may be able to help you with this problem.

Contact Oce'. At a recent employment they had over 250,000 microfiche cards with information punched on the cards. We needed to convert them to a digital searchable format. After much research, I discovered Oce', their equipment and software. They have a wonderful product and was worth the investment. There was no redundant disaster recovery with those archives and it was critical to have them converted. They have a scanner that will create a pdf of the image and read the punched data and create a file for you. You just load the cards in the bin and start the program. There is some initial field set up for the punched data so your output is valid. The office near Cleveland, Ohio came to our facility and also had a demonstration at their facility using our cards to show us the actual output and how to do any data manipulation if needed.

Wiz,

There are many companies which specialize in this type of conversion. I just had 3000+ aperture cards (think microfilm built into an IBM punch card) containing plans for a large hydro plant scanned & digitized. In Colorado, Mountain States Imaging in Centennial seems to be a big player, but there are others around. A google search on "microfiche conversion colorado" brought up companies in Denver, Lakewood & other areas.

Tony