Mechanical considerations in the design of a digital video cassette recorder

Between 1984 and 1987 a group of four Ampex mechanical engineers developed a cassette loaded transport for 19 mm tape. This design was to serve their digital video recorder development projects: the ACR-225 automated multi-cassette spot machine, and the manually loaded VPR-300 studio machine. Originally conceived for the D-1 format, the design was adapted to meet Ampex´s shift in emphasis towards D-2. The result of these efforts was a design with a number of very unique features. This paper describes the tape path with emphasis on the transport geometry and tape loading mechanism. In order to limit the scope of this paper, the authors have avoided discussion of the scanner, cassette elevator, and the detailed description of many transport components