Your Projects

Originally posted by MIPS 11-01-2019

The heard of the whole thing is the Coin totalizer and the plugboard.
The plugboard as seen above is just a bunch of terminals that let you select prices - Make sure you turn the machine off though before touching anything! ;-0
The totalizer is this three foot tall device that has a Coinco quarter/nickle/dime slug rejector on top and an escapement totalizer underneath. Inside that are three coin fingers and two weighted rods with hooks. One counts in 5 cent increments and the other in 25 cent increments. As the slug rejector separates the coins and the separate coins strike the totalizer fingers the rods release and drop by gravity on a geared track shared between both rods. This pushes down a central rack which pushes upwards a lever which rotates a radial contact in five cent increments. After a selection is made and the vend door closes an electric motor with a lobe pulls on the whole assembly to reset it and release the inserted coins to the bin.
I think one of the few modern upgrades this would benefit from aside from replacing the older fuses with circuit breakers is a GFCI given how there's so many damn places in this thing to make everything live.

For the most part this entire mechanism has been rebuilt with the exception of the totalizer. The plastic rods are weighted by a steel rod inside of them. as the plastic aged it shrunk and split in multiple places. This results in oddly spaced gearing which jams the machine. While new rods can't be purchased an idea is to have new hollow rods 3D printed that can have the old steel weights slide back inside.

Originally posted by MIPS 10-31-2019 (continued)

The door is NOT going to be easy. There are a lot more components that have been beaten up. It did however strip down rather well.

The door sliders all come apart nicely however and while most are too damaged to reuse there are three pristine examples that can be used to replace the remaining pieces. The laser cutter will come in really handy here.
Another portion of the door is a small fan that blows air up a channel and prevents the doors from fogging up. The original motor at one point seized, burned out and was wired out of the circuit. It's an AC motor like that found in stuff like bathroom fans.

This is where work stopped. I ran into other obligations and was not able to continue work in 2018 or 2019 but I hope to resume work in 2020. I'm hoping that reposting the progress report might help me find others willing to assist with the final metalwork and electrical but I'm always open to opinions on sourcing other components like parts to rebuild the refrigeration system or a custom double glazed window.

Originally posted by MIPS 10-31-2019 (continued)

Most of the refrigeration system was salvaged. At this point it makes no sense to invest a lot into it however I am keeping it around for now until I can find someone to consult with regarding sourcing used parts to complete the rebuild of it. The compressor seems to still be good so it's really just a case of plumbing.

Inside the cabinet I found the carriage had held up well to time. Aside from some hacky maintenance from the previous owner it all seems to be good aside from the carriage motor needs a new torque coupling and the FoodSafe thermostat needs to be wired back in. (it's a hybrid timer and thermostat that locks out the vending if the cabinet does not come down to temp after a set period of time)

As for the wiring, I'm on my own. Rowe is long out of business, the company who picked them up does not carry any documentation for a machine this old and so far I have found nobody else who has anything. The closest thing resembling a schematic was this damaged diagram in my machine.

All the wiring is color coded, so a lot of circuits can have their dots connected however much of it is ruined. I need to find a good source for color-coded wire before I can start building a new harness.
By this point however the cabinet was back to a point where it could be reassembled. Here it is with the unrestored door hung back on.

The door is NOT going to be easy. There are a lot more components that have been beaten up. It did however strip down rather well.

Originally posted by MIPS 10-31-2019 (continued)

From here the frame was ground, sanded and then primed. Smaller components were also cleaned up and repainted.

Most of the refrigeration system was salvaged. At this point it makes no sense to invest a lot into it however I am keeping it around for now until I can find someone to consult with regarding sourcing used parts to complete the rebuild of it. The compressor seems to still be good so it's really just a case of plumbing.

Originally posted by MIPS 10-31-2019


Back in early 2017 I remembered that up in the ruins of the old Lac Le Jeune Ski Ranch (this was a ski hill that closed around 1992 if memory serves and the overgrown trails can be seen from Highway 5) there was a really peculiar vending machine that was living out the rest of its life in an old shed. I was able to get access to the property once the snow had begun to melt and had found that in the years since, it has not moved but it was still there, and rather heavily vandalized.


Row Model 147 "General Merchandiser"
This was a strange machine. The inside is refrigerated and was arranged so that refrigerated foods were placed in compartments that when a selected amount of money was added the door would unlock and you could make your selection. These machines still exist as seen below.

The thing is, every machine I've found so far uses a rotating carousel, which requires a deep cabinet to deal with the large radius. This machine however uses vertical columns that move on a rectangular chain pulled assembly which makes it barely 24 inches deep. This machine is also ENTIRELY electromechanical. It's a maze of microswitches, contacts, solenoids and wiring, all operating at 120v. Even the counting of coins added is computed mechanically.

So I ended up paying a modestly small sum for what amounted to scrap metal and had Pierre help me move it back to my place.

This thing is a dump. At one point a rear vent cover was removed and this allowed packrats in which made quick work of the wiring and caused substantial corrosion to the base of the machine. At the same time someone had pried open the machine and made quick work of the door frame and coin cup. The front window was also broken as were most of the plastic doors.
The refrigeration system was also a near total loss. Corrosion had caused the fan to seize and holes to develop in the evaporator, releasing the refrigerant charge.

Work started initially by washing the machine, removing the door and stripping the main cabinet down for descaling, rust treatment and painting.

The cabinet also had a buckle in it from being pried open. While being made almost entirely of steel (this thing is very heavy by the way) it was relatively easy to put it back into shape with some percussive maintenance.