Simpsons Donut Tape Dispenser and Nuclear Power Plant Pencil Sharpener

Summary Section:

Meet this 4cm thick donut with an inner diameter of 1.2cm straight from the Simpsons, which is as useful for dispensing tape as it is for making you crave donuts and this 5cm by 8cm nuclear powerplant straight from Springfield which can help you sharpen your pencil. The Simpson’s tape dispenser is refillable and a new roll of tape that fits the size can be inserted anytime. These supplies come in a set with 2 other Simpsons-themed office supplies that are linked on my partner's page here: (link)

Lesson Plan and Activity

A recent analysis by Staples's finance department has concluded that sales for desktop organization products have declined in recent years.  The company would like to ramp up its profits in this area by enhancing the aesthetic nature of these products.  

Your group of two has been hired to design a set of theme-based organizational products.  Your team will design a set of office supplies that are tied together with a common theme. You must be able to justify the theme that connects the products together.  The idea is that the customer will not want to buy just one; they will want to buy the whole set.

Assembly/Construction Instructions Section (if needed):

Donut:

What you need to start assembling:

• 1x Bottom part of donut(Brown Color)
• 1x Top part of donut(Pink Color)
• One roll of tape with an inner radius of around 2.4cm

Tape Insertion:

• Grab a roll of tape that fits the space and will move comfortably within the donut’s frame
• Insert it onto the roll on the ring of the bottom part of the donut so the tape roll fits snug
• Lightly press the top part of the donut on top of the bottom part making sure the inner circles are aligned
• All done and ready to go!

Powerplant:
What you need:

• 1x Powerplant 
• 1x pencil sharpener around 1cm x 2cm

Sharpener assembly:

• With force, push down on the pencil sharpener so it fits in the hole at the top of the Power plant
• Push until its face is parallel to that of the top of the powerplant’s
• All set!

Design Choices: 

Donut:

• At first, we made the diameter of the ring of the donut 6cm but it was excess and too big so we made it 4cm.

• We figured we needed a thin layer of separation to make the parts fit together after being taken apart.
• At first thought, we would just insert a small slit for the tape to come out but we wanted to add creativity so we made it look like a bite mark using splines.
• Once we printed the donut, the parts didn’t fit nicely and snugly. To fix this we planned to make the inner circle of the donut marginally smaller by perhaps 0.1cm.
• We also noticed no place on the donut for a metal blade to fit for cutting the tape once pulled out of the roller. We have planned to create a small cut on the side of the donut to insert a metal blade.

Power Plant:

• We initially thought our powerplant would have a caving-in shape near the top. We added character by making an outward curve at the top to make it look more cartoonish.
• We thought we would extrude the nuclear symbol initially, but we figured that engraving it would be better. We engraved the atomic symbol on a curved surface, which proved challenging at first but worked when we “extruded cut to surface.”
• We thought it would be a pencil sharpener, and it worked as one, but we had the dilemma of the shavings having no exit. This meant the powerplant would eventually fill with pencil shavings. To combat this, we planned of making a hole at the bottom.
• Once printed, the powerplant looked quite small so we thought that a more appropriate size would be something along the lines of 7cm x 12cm.

Thank you for reading through this! If you want to print the other two parts of the set or are interested in them, make sure to go to my partners page linked above!