Photoelectric technology has spawned a wide variety of digital products, such as scanners, digital cameras, digital video cameras, and the like. Scanners can rapidly transform paper documents to electronic files and have been widely used in paperless office environments.
Refer to FIG. 1 for a conventional scanning apparatus 1, which includes at least a body 11, a lid 12, a carrier 13 for holding an optical module, a transport mechanism 14, a human-machine interface 15, a data processing unit 16 and connection lines 17 and 18. The body 11 has a scan window 111 that is permeable to light. The lid 12 is pivotally coupled on one side of the body 11. The carrier 13, transport mechanism 14, data processing unit 16 and connection lines 17 and 18 are housed in the body 11. The transport mechanism 14 is coupled on the carrier 13 to move the carrier 13 reciprocally within the range of the scan window 111. The data processing unit 16 is connected electrically to the carrier 13 and the human-machine interface 15 through the connection lines 17 and 18. When users operate the human-machine interface 15 through the connection line 18, the data processing unit 16 drives the carrier 13 through the connection line 17 to move along the transport mechanism 14 to scan a scanning document (not shown in the drawing) by projecting light through the scan window 111.
The optical module determines the scanning quality of the scanning apparatus 1. As the optical module is movable, to prevent the optical module from losing focus or being damaging during transportation, the carrier 13 or the optical module is generally coupled by a locking structure 131 before shipping from the plant so that the carrier 13 (or the optical module) is fixed during transportation or moving to avoid damage.
Furthermore, the scanning apparatus 1 is generally quite bulky. When the scanning apparatus 1 is not used, the interior space of the scanning apparatus 1 not filled with scanner elements is not fully utilized.