Tape Looping Machine

One Hundred Twenty Sixth Post: Tape Looping Machine

Once there was an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that a teacher’s assistant was in a contest to have her idea of an office product developed. Her idea was a tape looper that was designed to save the teachers time when putting the entire classes artwork on the wall. I haven’t heard anything about her idea since then.

Well in machine design one simple part is taken and expanded upon. Something that is simple has to be described in a way that the technician can build it. This is true of many machines and designs, but does it hold true of the tape looper? This is the question that needs a design answer.

In case you gave it some thought, the gear puzzle on Constructor’s Corner is not just an ordinary brain teaser that is based in theory. Instead it is a real world design problem. You guessed it...it has to do with the “tape looper machine.” When making sketches of a tape looper, I found that there had to be a simple way to tell the machine how to start and stop and when to cut the tape. Thus the “one revolution plus x” was created.

There are several ways to start and stop the machine, but I figured a simple switch would be cheaper and simpler than using computer processors. I wanted a mechanical answer. So this leads to the gear puzzle, but once this problem is solved, it leads to many more design problems inorder to create a tape looping machine.