Littleun's school is doing a charity event that's clearly changed a bit over the years - the flyer has some cartoon penny-people waving flags and it says "1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a coin war!"

"Coin isn't enough syllables," I say, narrowing my eyes, "but alright, you can have my odd change if it'll get her class a root beer float party."

All US coins and bills accepted, it says, "WELL THAT'S BANG AGAINST THE PENNY-WAR SPIRIT OF THE THING" I say, but whatever, let's empty out the jelly bean machine, it'll be a nice excuse to show y'all the coin mechanism.

Just a real quick look inside here. The coin mech plate pops out with the turn of a key. You can see the teeth on the flywheel here, one of them's painted red and the label says "Center the red tooth here so no free mdse is vended," I guess mdse means merchandise.

Flywheel in this context is the horizontal wheel with holes in it that jellybeans fall into, it rotates and lets the jellybeans fall out down the chute into not your mouth don't put your mouth on the hole JESUS NEVER MOUTH A COIN-OP FFS

The lever you see below the flywheel is how the top's held on the machine, it's just a long bolt and the top plate screws onto it, so when it's time to put more jellybeans in you unscrew the top from inside the machine, it's bent all lever-looking so you can do it one handed without needing tools.

Here's the coin mech, this is a show-and-tell so I'll describe it in the post rather than in the image description.

So there's a ratchet so the handle can only turn one way, there's a sprocket that interfaces with the teeth on the flywheel, and there's the all-important Penny Detection Lever that either brushes over a penny or drops into the hole left by a penny and jams. Sometimes there's thickness-detecting levers too but hey, it's pennies, no need to push the boat out.

Some ways you can tell this is old, #1 is the fact that it runs on heckin' PENNIES, #2 is that big side-mounted Washer Probe that would drop into the hole in a washer and jam (cannae even get a washer for a penny these days), #3 is the label saying the manufacturer will repair the mechanism for free if you post it to them.

Machines that use bigger coins, for example 10p's or quarters, will make use of a strategically positioned hole that's just slightly too small for a 10p to fall through. Unlike in other coin mechs with a return channel, if you put a penny in a quarter mech you won't get it back, the machine will just thieve it off you, and if you don't like it then you can explain to the operator why you were trying to see if it'd vend on a penny and get into who's-cheating-who here, you cheeky little rascal.

Anyway I guess we need to eat more jellybeans 'cause this is a year's worth of pennies here.

Don't worry, we've got a Plan B.

Coin-operated machines in general have a very jolly vibe. I can never quite tell if they're a veneer of frivolity over Serious Bizniss Money Making Machine, or if they're the other way round, but gumballs in particular are unambiguously jolly little machines.

When I was about my daughter's age I got interested in gumball machines specifically, because they (at least the home-use toy ones) were a coin-operated thing that seemed within my pocket-money grasp. I got a couple little plastic ones and then one day stumbled across one of these bad boys, and it was a very happy day indeed. This is a Carousel, very popular line of home-use gumball machines.

These machines take coins, and indeed don't dispense without a coin, but have very simple mechanisms with no discrimination; the slot is the size of a quarter or 10p coin, but they'll vend on pennies no problem. Also the globe is fairly thin glass and there's no lock, just a screw on top. Apart from that, and being slightly smaller, a toy gumball machine is pretty much the same as a real commercial one, they work on the same principles and do the same thing.

What I didn't know then, what I wish I'd known then, what I'm telling you now in case you've got someone in your life who thinks gumball machines are jolly wee devices and would like one in the house, is that if you shop around a bit and have some patience, the real commercial ones you see at the mall aren't very much more expensive than the toy ones :P A secondhand Beaver with a quarter mech and lock and key can be had for maybe ten bucks more than a brand new Carousel, if you're not in a hurry for one.

Like I'm looking at this now
https://www.gumballstuff.com/beaver-rb16-machine-with-lock-and-key/
and going hmm, I have that in my wallet, and it'd be nice to have M&M's in the upstairs office...

NO-NUT NOVEMBER IS HERE, and this is a time for the internet's most hideously joyless people to recruit vulnerable young men into a month of zero orgasms and an Incredible Amount of exposure to the sort of ideologies that can end up separating these already vulnerable young men from their real-life support networks and indoctrinating them further into the Awful No-Cumming Cult, and so to counter this ridiculous-but-no-less-harmful-for-it farce it's time for Dan to be Horny On Main for the entire month of November and that means AN UPDATE TO THE GUMBALL MACHINE THREAD

I am UPDATING THE GUMBALL MACHINE THREAD because I remembered a Thing I Witnessed in my youth, and it's come to my attention that some of my followers aren't from the North of England but instead FOREIGN PARTS, and might be completely unaware of the knickers-for-a-nicker vending machines that festooned Blackpool promenade dispensing sexy undies for a £1 coin.

HERE. HERE, YOU HORNY NORTHERNERS. LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT IT AND SPEND THE NEXT HOUR CLEANING THE SPUNK OFF YOUR CEILINGS.

Phwoarrrrr, eh?

Now on first glance this might seem about as sexy as a steak and kidney pie, but consider: you're on holiday, everything's garishly brightly coloured and over the top and also kinda filthy and seedy, you'll likely never see these people again, you might have already had a drink or two, the stakes are super low, and You Don't Know What You're Going To Get. It might be hideous, it might be sexy, it'll probably be a giggle either way, it's a gamble for not much money and it's easy to go "Oh haha, silly me, put my money in the wrong slot" etc.

Aye, it looks ridiculous, aye, it doesn't look sexy, aye, surely they can't have had much interest, and aye, someone went and emptied these things out every night, pouring a golden waterfall of shiny pound coins into a big jingling bag.

Updating the #gumball machine thread because look what I got for Christmas :D

It's a Beaver RB16!

Black might seem like a maudlin colour for such a jolly wee device, but it sets off the chrome really nicely.

Anyway here's how it comes apart. You insert key, unscrew the lock at the top, and the globe separates from the body.

Anyway this is a secondhand one, which is a perfect present for a coin-op tech because it means the first thing he gets to do is take it all apart and give it a jolly good clean. Even more thoughtfully, the "Beaver" logo on the handle was on upside down, which means taking the coin mech apart, so let's do that

Here's a picture of the coin mech, this one's set to US quarters. You can see the sprocket that interfaces with the candy wheel, and the coin-measuring levers are just visible.

Also it's a bit grimy eh.

The sprocket is removed, to reveal this appetizing paste of old lube and candy crumbs.

There's a shield to stop lube from dropping into the candy chute, don't worry - in normal operation only the tiniest crumbs ever work their way through to come into contact with anything that touches a coin, which is good because money is FILTHY.

As we dismantle further I get impressed by the engineering in this. Beaver are commonly regarded as among the best. Here's a view of the inside of the handle.

"Put your budget in the bits that people touch" is a valid engineering mantra, and check out how far they took that here; the shaft doesn't attach straight to the handle but instead rides against a pair of steel pins which are sandwiched against nylon shafts.

Why?

The nylon-steel pin combo moves or compresses just a tiny bit inside its packing of grease, absorbing shock from being twisted against no coin, reducing chances of the shaft breaking, and making the whole thing feel smoother when you turn it. Pretty slick.

(also I think this means that if you get a wrench on this thing, the nylon will compress and make the handle suddenly pop a turn before the coin mech breaks)

Thinking about it now, that's probably how the beaver logo ended up upside down on this thing.

Anyway with further disassembly we can see one of the two brass coin detection levers (the other one measures thickness), a ratchetting pawl which stops the handle being turned anti-clockwise, and a whole lotta crusty Beaver grease.

So now that things are all cleaned up and our Beaver coin mech is fresh and shiny, we gotta relubricate.

Different coin-op stuff takes different qualities and quantities of lube and grease. Arcade games take none, save for very old joysticks. Pinballs take one tiny swipe of grease on the slingshot pivots and that's it. Jukeboxes want to be absolutely doused in the stuff. This little Beaver wants a lot of lube too, but here's the rub; since this is gonna be around stuff that people eat, we can't go pumping it full of lithium grease or 3-in-1 oil, we gotta use something food-safe.

Vaseline lip balm it is!

Filled my Beaver up with M&M's; only regular ones mind, kid wanted the caramel sort but that's a good way to make a gooey sticky mess of this poor Beaver

Still so impressed with that handle design.

Also kinda incredulous about the situation that must've happened to make that necessary!

Someone had to have a big spanner or pair of grips or something, at the same time they didn't have a quarter, and REALLY wanted a gumball, and wasn't polite enough to not try to break the coin mech to get one but was too polite to crack the machine open and thieve the money out of it, they had to have thieving equipment on hand but only want to do a very tiny little bit of thieving, and this scenario had to happen ENOUGH TIMES that enough operators complained to Beaver for them to invent this slip-clutch handle

Anyway congratulations to everyone who had "Wholesome coin-op dude's gumball machine thread gets horny and illegal" on their 2023 Fedi Bingo Card

Morning Fedi, doing some manufacturer outreach because dang how come there's no purple gumball machines what the hell

Pfft

Maybe their form software doesn't like me saying gay or using firefox, boo

Guess I'll email them

Had to go on facebook to get their email address because it's not on the website lol

anyway email sent, now we wait

If I were really going for it hard I'd have asked them to add pink/brown/light blue to the lineup too, but hell these guys have been going since the sixties and haven't gotten around to purple yet, it'll probably be a minute