Building a soda/beer dispenser using arcade parts?


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Posted by wrybread on 22, 2001 at 2:12 AM:

I've been tossing around this idea for a little while, maybe it sounds like fun to someone else too and we could brainstorm. I'd love to build a coin-op soda/beer dispenser that mounts in a regular fridge, using only part of it. The gist is you put some fixed amount of money in ($1 probably) and it then dispenses a can of beer.

I figure it'd be a couple of railings to hold the beers in a stack, and at the bottom would be a mechanism that releases for a moment to dispense a beer. I've tootled with cigarette vending machines a bit and the way they do it (or this one did) is one bar went up to prevent the previous packs from moving, then the bottom bar opened to drop the pack. In other words, the design would require two solenoids, one pulls in to release the beer, and one that pushes up on the other side of that beer to prevent all the other beers from spilling out.

Thus the beers are stacked in teh fridge like this:

|  BEER # 4  |
| BEER # 3 |
| BEER # 2 _| (solenoid #1, normally open)
| BEER # 1 _| (solenoid #2, normally closed)

So when you put in a coin, solenoid #1 closes, preventing the other beers from spilling out, and #2 opens, dropping that bottom beer (beer #1).

In pinball machines there's coils that are just little solenoids that might work just fine, the trick would be working out a system so that the bottom coil (#2 in the diagram) could be normally closed, since with those coils if you keep voltage on them (extending the solenoid) you fry the coil after about a minute or so. There's probably some coil that's nrmally extended though...

Another issue would be the coin mech. Finding some way to insert money (ideally it'd accept dollars too) and then have it send some pulse to the coils that would get them to do their thing. I imagine the coin mech would fire a relay that would supply voltage to the coils, getting #1 to close and #2 to open. So the relay would probably have to trigger some timer type device (of which I don't have a clue where to find one) that would maintain the pulse for, say, 3 seconds.

I imagine I've lost everyone in this ridiculous description, but on the off chance that I havn't, and on the off chance someone else is interesated in this, any ideas?




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