Motorized easel

I am mounting a conservation lab at the Universidad Nacional
autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), and am looking for an electric easel with
X, Y coordinates, and millimetric precision in order to analyze
paintings by different means (microscope, IR camera, digital camera,
etc) without having to move the equipment too much. My problem is
that I have not been able to find this type of machine in Mexico,
and constructing one seems to be very expensive (USD 25,000). I
would like you to tell me if there is a place or person that makes
them at the US, and if they're on sale. Also if you have any idea of
the prices.

    **** Moderator's comments: Tatiana wrote back to provide
    additional detail:

    I will try to describe the machine that I'm looking for, even
    though I have never seen one myself.

    What I need is a support where I can hold a canvas of sizes up
    to 2 x 1.5 mts. The canvas should be in a vertical position,
    completely parallel to the wall. Then, regardless of the size of
    the painting, I should be able to move it vertical and
    horizontally so that all of the painting surface is capable of
    being positioned in one same point. Thinking of this as an x,y
    coordinate, the point would be zero. My objective is to be able
    to study the painting through the optics of a microscope, that
    is why I look for millimetric precision, and also with the use
    of IR video and digital camera without moving the equipment too
    much.

    Mechanically this should not be a very difficult problem to
    solve, in fact, I took the idea from an article I read from the
    Metropolitan Museum of art in NY. The thing is that at the Met
    nobody knows or remembers where they got their electric easel
    from!

Tatiana Falcon
Laboratorio de diagnostico de Obras de Arte
Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, UNAM

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:7
                   Distributed: Monday, July 12, 1999
                        Message Id: cdl-13-7-008
                                  ***