Claw Machine

Overview

A claw machine is a crane game where a player pays, steers an overhead grabber over a pile of prizes, and drops it to try to grab one. Prizes sit in the glazed Cabinet under a X-Y Gantry that moves the claw in two axes. Pressing the drop button sends the Claw Assembly down, closes its fingers, and lifts; if it holds, the prize is carried to the chute and falls to the player. A Coin/Bill Acceptor takes payment, a Game Controller runs the game, the Operator Panel gives the player a joystick and button, and Lighting & Sound lighting and sound provide the attract effects.

How it works

The crane is a two-axis gantry. A fixed X-Axis Rail carries a moving Y-Axis Rail, and two Axis Drive Motor geared motors pull the carriage along each axis through a Drive Belt, with Limit Switch switches telling the controller where the travel ends are. The player drives the gantry directly with the Joystick for a fixed time, then a Push Button commits the grab. The claw itself hangs from a Cable Winch, a geared motor on a cable drum, so dropping and raising it is just paying out and reeling in the Lift Cable.

Grabbing is electromagnetic. At the bottom the Claw Solenoid energises and pulls the three Claw Finger fingers shut against their Coil Spring return springs; the winch then lifts. Operators tune difficulty by setting how much current the solenoid gets and how often a full-strength grip is allowed, so the Game Controller (an Compute SoC Module and Microcontroller driving the motors and solenoid through Motor Driver stages) manages payout to a target win rate. Credit comes in through the Coin/Bill Acceptor, a won prize drops through the Prize Chute to the Prize Door, and the whole game runs off one Power Supply.