Building hacking together coin operated ball dispenser

[takethecastle57]

[drcrippen324]

that should be a simple rewright of the eproms

[koifeeder]

Wow, stayed up waaaay too late last night Its comming together. Decided on using the picaxe controller. One thing I did notice that the there is about a quarter of a second from when the system drops the ball until it rolls down to the sensor. So far, 1250 milliseconds = 20 balls, Its pretty accurate, but I can't rely on just time, so I will have it stop somewhere arount 22 then do a couple quick pulses until it hits 25.

Never thought of a phone card dispenser, sounds neat. I found these, but they are huge and expensive.
Pre-Owned Phone Card Vending Machine - eBay (item 370022267451 end time Jan-06-09 12:19:56 PST)

[pinball wizard]

very interesting project.i can't wait to see how it turns out.i was thinking about building a mechanical one using a mechanical jackpot mechanism from an older pachinko actuated by a 25 cent push chute off of a pool table.15 balls for a quarter.i have the parts to do so,but not the time.an electronic one sounds way cooler though.

[koifeeder]

Well, its comming together. I'll post some pics tomorrow. Having problems with the processor being able to recognize the stream of balls fast enough. Im have to do some reading on the best way to read the switches, maybe interrupts.

[bowman1268]

Can't wait to see it you have got me really wanting to do this to mine.

[koifeeder]

Still making progress, the idea of building something over the Christmas holiday was a little tough. Lots of family, movies, and food kept me busy, but I still have a few more days. Last Night, I got tired of messing with the gearhead motor, and put a stepper motor on it, found out that I could simply drive it with some parts I already had, so I changed the code, now it will dispense properly.

I do not have it built yet, no frame or front, just a pile of stuff and plenty of tape to hold it all together. It will now dispense 25 balls per switch trigger, It will also turn on a green led when the hopper is full, and a red led when the hopper is empty.

As part of that code, it actually will stop the ball dispenser if it senses the hopper out, and will continue where it left off when you refill the hopper.

I havn't figured out how to mount it. It will have to be at least 4 inches wide due to the stepper and payout wheel. I guess I will make it the same height as a pachinko machine. As far as the sides, I was thinking 1/2 in or 3/4 in plywood.

[compirate]

Ok, lets see your Google Sketchup drawing of it!

[koifeeder]

Oh, I got ya hooked on it, now I have to go learn it ! The Student is now the master

[koifeeder]

A picture! Here is a side view of what I have so far. Its comming together pretty well. Want to figure out what kind of decorations to put on it. I was looking for some of the anime art that would be simple line drawings, but no luck yet.

[Meathead]

That's awesome! You'll need to post a video when it's all done!!

[koifeeder]

Arggg, you would think, getting it to dispense the correct number of balls was the hard part. Not Quite. The blam ball feeder to the dispenser is causing me quite the bother. It looks so simple, a long tray so they get in line ready to go into the feeder, but in reality, they start to bunch up, or bind, Uggg. More trials and errors.

[compirate]

Try having several smaller hoppers, angled floors emptying from one side, then the other into each other. Another thought is to use the ramps and hopper from one of your machines. Just shorten the ramps to fit your design, or extend your design back a little.

The biggest thing I've learned about pachinko ball handling is to keep as few balls on top of one another as possible. Believe it or not, in a standard pachinko aisle, the majority of the balls are contained in the bottom of the aisle, not the top. There is a very small bin at the lifter, where the balls are distributed in a single layer down a ramp to individual side ramps that keep the balls in a single file then down a spring tube (single file) to a ball cutoff unit just above the reward hopper. The only place they pile up in the reward hopper, but not much more than a few high (not like we do it ).