ME4041 Lexmark z11 Project

by Puneeth Kumar and Michael Buff

Presented to Dr. David Rosen, Raghuram Pucha, and Kevin Klein

Spring 2005

Printer Modeling and Assembly

We chose to model a Lexmark z11 printer because in today's world printers help form the technological backbone of society. We modeled 16 components of the printer, including the very complex main body shape as well as the internal gearing and the printer cartridge. Dimensions on the simple components were measured using a simple tape measure, while the more complex components were scanned into AutoCAD.

Figure 1 shows the final product of the modeling and assembly.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows the backing subassembly. This subassembly includes the printer cartridge, the cartridge holder, a metal backing, and the revolving shaft that moves the paper.

Figure 2

Figure 3 shows the gear subassembly. This subassembly is made up of six gears. The first gear attaches to a shaft that attaches to a motor. The last gear attaches to the revolving shaft that moves the paper.

Figure 3

Figure 4 is an exploded view of the final product. The other two subassemblies are intact. This view shows the internal components that cannot be seen in Figure 1

Figure 4

Finite Element Analysis

For the finite element analysis we chose to do the gear teeth becuase this would be a likely area for failure. The gear that would reeive the most force would be the top gear connecting to the motor bar. We determined from the Analysis that the gear tooth would fail when a force of 40N was placed on it. This force would be unlikely to occur so the gear is strong enough to withstand the loads and is probably overdesigned.

Figure 5

Conclusions

From the FEA failure would be unlikely to occur. The most likely time failure would occur would be during a paper jam when the gears could suddenly freeze up. Since the gears are cheap to make they are overdesigned so that failure would be extremly unlikely.