User:1sfoerster/Tape purge/Howard Community College/Fall2011/502 ZNS

Problem Statement
Supermarkets, at the end of the day, print out a long receipt that is a record of all purchases in the day. Normally, the receipts would be rolled up by hand, though this is a long and ineffective process. The receipts need to be rolled up faster and neatly, by way of some kind of mechanism.

Team Members

 * Zblaha2768
 * Nridings2
 * npsweet

Summary
The team started out by coming up with ideas. Zack made a lego mechanism that worked quite well, while both Nate and Nick worked on improvements to the design. The design would roll up the receipt tape using a crank to roll up the receipt. At week 3, Nate came up with a novel new design that worked significantly better than the lego version. The design and prototype construction was finished by the end of week 4.

Story
At the beginning of week 1, the team was unsure on how to proceed. Research on the topic of receipt rolling turned up nearly nothing, but Zack made a lego prototype of a potential design at around the beginning of week 2. Nick and Nate proceeded to come up with improvements to this design while Zack made improvements of his own. Problems in the design included the spool jumping as the crank is turned. To solve this problem, Zack made a "hook" to keep the roll from jumping upward. Nate and Nick created a tensioning device, which was successful in keeping the receipt in tension, but tended to crumple and rip the receipt as it was fed through. To remedy this, Nate took apart a printer and got a pair of rollers that would likely be significantly better than the lego version the mechanism was currently using. Nate, however, had created a successful motorized prototype at the end of week 3, and the team switched gears and began work on this newer, more successful prototype. By the end of week 4, the design was finished. This new design needs to be plugged into a wall socket to function, but is very effective at rolling up receipt tape.

Decision List
-Motor or crank

-Pursue a lego based design or build a prototype from scratch.

-Continue the current lego design or pursue new (promising) motorized design.

Material List
Original Design

-Lego Technic (various parts, from a snowmobile set # 8272, may not exist anymore)

-Receipt Spool

Motorized Design

-Motor

-Plywood (various size and shape).

-Button (on/off switch)

-outlet plug/wire

-Various lego pieces

Software List
Google chrome for research.

Time
16 hours

Tutorials
Make an assembly that allows for the receipt tape to enter straight, such as walls or a tensioner, to keep receipt from crumpling. Motorized mechanism is reconfigured, due to its simplicity. To make the motorized assembly:

solder an on/off switch to a motor and power source (battery or wall plug).

attach rolling assembly to motor.

The mechanism will roll up the tape quite effectively, however, may need some means of keeping the receipt tape straight for rolling.

Next Steps
The current mechanism needs to be miniaturized, and also needs to run on power from batteries rather than a wall socket. Materials should also not include legos.