Football Tape Dispenser

My partner Josy and I created four office supplies with a sports theme. Go visit his page to see the other two at (Will put the tag in when created) and my page for a baseball. This football was created specifically for you to get rid of your old outdated and, definitely not snazzy, tape dispenser (save the cutting part and the actual tape for later) and to upgrade to this stain-of-the-art football one. It will not take up any more space than your old one did, do the same things, and look good doing it. This print also does not require support and a piece where one part is the holder and the other goes through the tape and just slides into the cutouts like in the picture. Here is a link to where you can print a tape dispenser holder https://www.printables.com/model/4174-tape-dispenser/files ( I didn't have time to create one)

We created these objects for my engineering class and here are the problem statement and constraints.

Problem Statement:

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 their 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.  The idea is that the customer will not want to buy just one; they will want to buy the whole set.

Constraints:

• You will be constructing an actual size model of your product in Solidworks.
• Your items must be interesting to look at and unique - a conversation starter.  An individual walking by would do a double take to closely examine the amazingly artistic item you’ve created.
• Your items must contain examples of ALL FOUR main Features:  Extrusion, Revolve, Sweep, and Loft. 
  • All Features DO NOT need to be present in each piece, just amongst the set
• Your items must take advantage of at least one of: Circular Pattern, Linear Pattern, Sketch-Driven Pattern, Mirror 
  • All Features DO NOT  need to be present in each piece, just amongst the set
• All of your items must take advantage of Filleting and maybe Chamfering
• Each piece you design should fit within a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube, or 1000cm3 volume equivalent.
  • Each item can be multiple pieces to be assembled for easier printing
  • Maximum length in any direction is limited to 20cm (slightly negotiable, MAYBE 27cm max)
• Should be 3D printable with limited/no supports, (each item can be multiple assemblable pieces to help this)

To create this it was based on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PftdZ9i8S9M&t=703s and in the design choice I changed a lot about it. First I made the whole football solid and then got rid of the holes for the laces (Explained why in the design choices). Then I created an eclipse (with no specific dimensions just what looked proportional to the ball) on a new plane that had relations to the bottom of the ball and the top plane. I then extruded that up (didn't matter as long as it did not come out the top of the ball so about two cm) and drafted it by a degree of 30. I continued by making the sketches shown in design choice three on the front plane and cut extruded them out to create the area for the tape.

Design Choices:

1st change

Before

 After

The first change was originally the idea was to have the football be thin, like a shell, and then go from there. That was going to be too complicated so I went back to the original ¼ of the football and made it a solid then that fixed the solid problem.

2nd chance

Before

After

Now since it was solid and the holes from the laces were created on the front plane and were cut extruded through all they got in the way. Since the object was completely solid and turned out just to be useless (Seen in the picture above). The video made the football just for looks on Solidworks, but since I was printing this that was not going to work. So I just deleted them and the laces still turned out awesome.

3rd change

First idea

Second idea

Also as a result of having the object be solid, our original idea was to have the football cut into 2 halves. Then there would be 2 cylinders that were different sizes and when they came together inside of the circle of the tape it would be able to move (This idea was taken from actual tape dispensers as seen in the second picture in the first idea section). But that was when the inside of the football was hollow and would split into two bodies. So instead I made the sketch you see above on the top plane and then cut-extruded it by midplane. This was made so the print was easier and it just made more sense when having a solid body.

4th change

Before

After

Finally, when it was first printed we figured out that the body was not fully solid (As seen in the before section where you can see lines) and connected so we went back in quickly and just made all the bodies come together and that fixed it (As seen in the after part where the lines are now gone).

Thanks for reading!