Vending Machine

Overview

A combo vending machine sells both snacks and bottled drinks from one chilled cabinet. The product sits behind a double-glazed Glass Front Window so shoppers can see what they are buying, lit by the LED Lighting, inside a foam-insulated steel Cabinet & Door that keeps the whole volume cold.

Two kinds of mechanism feed the product. Snacks ride on helical coils in the Dispensing System section, each coil turned by its own gearmotor so a single revolution pushes the front item off the shelf. Drinks queue on canted gravity shelves with a spring push mechanism that releases one bottle at a time. Whatever is vended falls through the Delivery System chute into a bin behind an anti-theft baffle.

Keeping it cold is the Refrigeration System loop: a hermetic compressor, condenser, evaporator, circulation fan, and thermostat that cycles the compressor to hold a few degrees Celsius. Taking the money is the Payment System block, which validates coins and makes change, accepts notes, and reads cards and phones. Everything is sequenced by the Main Controller, and the shopper drives it through the User Interface.

How it works

The shopper picks a product on the User Interface, keying a code on the keypad or tapping the touchscreen, and pays at the Payment System system. The payment controller tallies credit from the coin mechanism, bill acceptor, and card reader over the MDB bus and tells the Main Controller when the price is met.

The controller then fires the matching tray. For a snack it switches the relay for that coil's motor in the Dispensing System section and runs the coil one turn; for a drink it triggers the shelf's push escapement. The product drops down the Delivery System chute, where the Product Drop Sensor infrared beam confirms it actually fell, if nothing breaks the beam within the timeout, the controller refunds or re-vends rather than charging for a stuck product. Change is paid back from the coin tubes.

Throughout, the Refrigeration System system cycles on the thermostat to hold the cabinet temperature, the door heater fights condensation on the glass, and the telemetry modem reports each sale and the stock level back to the operator so the route driver knows what to restock.