help: claw vending machinist?

[ttamarillos]

Dear all, 

Would you please help with a few questions on claw vending machines? I'm talking about the machines they usually fill up with plush toys or sweets - you play them by controlling their claw/crane with a joystick to try getting the toys/sweets you want.

Does any of you work with them regularly? Have you modified the insides of more than 1 machine? 

What I'm wondering is, firstly, whether machines coming from different makers would also have different "architecture" inside.

Or, if you were able to modify one (e.g. reverse the movement control so that when you control the claw to go left it would go right instead), how easy would it be to apply exactly the same modification to another machine coming from a different maker?

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon, 

Tintin

[Ryan Tregea]

From my extremely limited experience It wouldn't be that hard at all, They mostly seemed to have different control board but lots of parts are re-used from other coin op devices, Games machines and the like... Lots of the cranes I've seen go both left and right, So not sure how that would affect you.

Also the control board would be easy to replace with an Arduino and a few relays, The grabber is just an electromagnet based design.. The stronger the electromagnet the stronger it grips.. Which is how they adjust the game ones to keep their profit margins... You just turn down the strength on it.

Regards,

Ryan

[ttamarillos]

 

Thanks Ryan! I 

[ttamarillos]

[Oops. Premature click syndrome.] 

Thanks Ryan! This morning I've found that one that I've got from a supplier in Guangzhou (bought in 2009, company now defunct) actually uses exactly the same boards as one from a supplier in Sydney (company still running) - figured this out from their manuals. Same CPU diagram, dip switch settings, IO board, drive board for the crane, etc etc, basically the same soul in a different body. http://www.highway.net.au/manuals/toy_story_crane_9620_193.pdf

What I'm actually trying to do is synchronise 8 of them. The idea is to have 1 machine accessible/playable, and the other 7 physically inaccessible just as a show of probability (you can see them but you can't touch). I've done a synchronising test with mini claw vending machines like http://tinyurl.com/8bmoyap - they're pretty simple. These mini machines run on batteries, however, so I thought the big ones running from AC power would be a bit different. Is this true? If it is, how exactly would it be different? 

With the mini machines, I tested synchronising 2 machines. I figured out that it is possible to have just machine1 running with a battery, hook up all the cables with machine2's cables (no battery in machine2), and have machine2 as the slave to machine1's joystick. I also bypassed the coin sensor in machine2 basically by just ignoring it (machine2 and on is supposed to be physically inaccessible anyway) - as the only function of the coin sensor is to turn on the crane function. The thing is, the crane movement in machine2 in this case was slower than in machine1. I haven't tried with more machines but I suspect adding more machines would make the un-powered machines even slower (is this a valid suspicion?). Is there anything in the nature of DC power that might be the reason for this? If the problem is with the DC power, could this be solved in AC-powered machines? 

Upon revisiting the manuals for the big machines, I also saw that the board in these big machines actually uses DC power (or am I wrong? Please look at the manual at the highway.net.au link, for example page 17 where it says Pin 15 +5V Output and Pin 16 +12V Output - this sounds familiar ... like an arduino board ... ?). I'm no expert obviously and quite a bit confused ... I guess this is always the case with boards (that they're in DC, and then they'll have some kind of a transformer) ... ?

Anyways, bottom line question is, how easy/difficult is it to synchronise 8 big machines? What are the possible complications? 

Thank you and looking forward to hearing more, 

Tintin

[Zac Watts]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:19 AM, ttamarillos <traveling...@gmail.com> wrote:

 The thing is, the crane movement in machine2 in this case was slower than in machine1. I haven't tried with more machines but I suspect adding more machines would make the un-powered machines even slower (is this a valid suspicion?). Is there anything in the nature of DC power that might be the reason for this? If the problem is with the DC power, could this be solved in AC-powered machines? 

Battery voltage can be all over the place, particularly for alkalines, as the voltage drops over it's life-span. This could affect motor speed. 

http://www.component-shop.co.uk/assets/images/300_discharge-graph.jpg for example.

[PJ]

Me best mate works on these and arcade machines for a living. PM your contact details and I will put you in contact.