2017.08.30: Artifacts of the past

The tape cassette, despite its dated appearance, is still widely used to store a large chunk of the internet's data. That said, it's stood the test of time and deserves the chance to be understood. In order to build the grounds collector and grinder for our ∇brüd coffee maker we needed a way to connect a motor to a shaft in a remote way. In other words, we need to spin a shaft while the motor is inches away from it. Naturally, this brings us to pulleys, gears, and belt systems. These systems are used all over great engineering products, however, our issue was slightly unique in that we needed the belt system to be removable. Again, we want the coffee maker to be 100% maintainable. We want the user to understand how their coffee is served. Whether the user wants to or not, we provide the capability of taking the entire machine apart without weird or custom tools. Project Del's objective includes making the world as transparent as possible. That starts with giving users the ability to tinker.

Anyway, back to removable belt systems. The tape cassette is exactly that. It has a "belt" strung around two "pulleys" and when positioned correctly across two shafts, the belt moves freely as a head reads data off the magnetic tape. Even cooler? The system has a fancy plastic carrying case that lets users remove them from one machine and carry them to another. This is exactly what we needed! Thus the name of this article, 'Artifacts of the past.' The artifact, of course, being the tape cassette.

Now that inspiration has struck, we just needed to CAD. I finished that yesterday and now I have a belt system for both the grinder and grounds collector. 'Cheers, to progress!' Tomorrow I'll be working on the grinder and really finishing the implementation details of integrating it with the rest of the coffee maker.

We really only have the water heater and grinder integration left in order to make our first prototype. Now, we just have to figure out our 3d printing situation.