Postage Meter (AVR)
We started thinking about this project quite early and at the same time we decided to do something with servo or stepper motors. At first, we were thinking of controlling the speed of a servo-motor using PWM output of Atmel 8515 micro-controller. After doing some research and visiting the website of Pitney Bowes, the largest manufacturer of Postage Meters, we decided to go for a little bit more complicated project and make an Automatic-feed Postage Meter capable of accepting different envelop sizes.
The project did not only require a great deal of code writing and electrical wiring, but it also made us design the architecture and mechanical parts of the system to handle the paper properly. Especially, the characteristics of the paper made the design even more complicated during calibration. The spacing between the plastic rods, the positions of stepper motors, plastic rods, solenoids, envelope tray, keypad and LCD had to be calculated very accurately to prevent jamming of the paper. We used Plexiglas to build our machine out of, and it was very time consuming to cut and shape the material. We would like to thank Daniela Quesada, a junior in College of Architecture, Arts and Planning, for helping us throughout the project.
Link: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/e...0Meter/Home.htm
We started thinking about this project quite early and at the same time we decided to do something with servo or stepper motors. At first, we were thinking of controlling the speed of a servo-motor using PWM output of Atmel 8515 micro-controller. After doing some research and visiting the website of Pitney Bowes, the largest manufacturer of Postage Meters, we decided to go for a little bit more complicated project and make an Automatic-feed Postage Meter capable of accepting different envelop sizes.
The project did not only require a great deal of code writing and electrical wiring, but it also made us design the architecture and mechanical parts of the system to handle the paper properly. Especially, the characteristics of the paper made the design even more complicated during calibration. The spacing between the plastic rods, the positions of stepper motors, plastic rods, solenoids, envelope tray, keypad and LCD had to be calculated very accurately to prevent jamming of the paper. We used Plexiglas to build our machine out of, and it was very time consuming to cut and shape the material. We would like to thank Daniela Quesada, a junior in College of Architecture, Arts and Planning, for helping us throughout the project.
Link: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/e...0Meter/Home.htm