For this lab, we were able to take apart an old cassette player. It looked (and smelled) like it was from the 70’s, which was pretty cool. We first played around with it, pushed all of the buttons and such, then we started to take it apart.

 

The first thing that came out was the battery pack. It just fell out. Then we started to unscrew everything we could until the front cover was off and the inner workings and circuit board was out. Then we finally used wire cutters to separate all of the parts inside.

There were a lot of small screws that we took out of the device. The main bulk of the machine was the base that connected the play buttons to the inside workings. The cassette player also included a speaker inside, which was made of thin plastic, probably cut from sheets. There was a rubber belt that seemed to be connected to a motor inside as well. The rubber belt was probably made from cutting and squeezing slabs of rubber into thin bands. The front cover was made of aluminum and it seemed like it was stamped and bent from a sheet of aluminum in order to make the shape for the machine.

Some design features that the cassette player included are the buttons, made of plastic, to play, rewind, stop, and record the tapes, then a mic input made of metal that allows a mic to be plugged in so a tape could be recorded on, and then the internal speaker, made from thin plastic, that allows the tape to be played out loud.

The cassette player does not seem like it was meant to be taken apart. I think that this item was made in large batches because it is a useful handheld item that was popular back in the days. It was Sony brand, and a lot of the inside pieces had Sony markings on them, so it seems like it was made in large batches.

 

We didn’t get around to weighing and counting all of the parts that we took out of the cassette player, but the screws were all small, and it seemed that the bulk of the weight was the metal (aluminum?) inside of the device. But we only ended up using 2 different tools to take this machine apart. We used a screwdriver and wire cutters. We used the screwdriver the most. There were a lot of small screws that we had to undo. Some of them were screwed in really tight and in hard-to-reach locations, which is another reason why we thought it was not meant to be taken apart.

We completed most of the worksheet that was handed out in class, but we did not get to recored all of the categorized pieces and their weights.

 

 

I wish that we had had a tape to play to see if the device worked in the beginning, but sadly we did not. Even so, it was still very interesting and had entertainment value in taking it apart.