Coin Slide Operated Jelly Bean Machine

Coin Slide Operated Jelly Bean Machine

The Coin Slide Operated Jelly Bean Machine

STL files for this project are available at Printables and can be found HERE.

I love mechanical things and this project started out as a simple project to test out printing some worm gears. I started designing a simple base in Solidworks to hold the gears so I could test them spinning and meshing together and I just happened to be snacking on jelly beans and thought “Man… I should make a jelly bean dispenser out of these.”… then about halfway into the design process I thought “man this should be coin operated like some of those other 3D printed candy machines”,…. but “Maybe it should be different though” so I decided to design and incorporate a coin slide operated mechanism… well after all that this snowballed into the “The Coin Operated Jelly Bean Machine.”

This was probably the most complex thing I designed at the time and the design kept changing along the way adding different ideas so it’s kind of a weird design with the crank handle at the rear but that’s just how things worked out along the way.  It does work pretty well but did have some flaws with the coin slide lock outs and it can jam up if you get an odd size jelly bean but over all it was a fun project to design, print, and assemble.

Turning the handle dispenses the jelly beans by use of the disk shown here. It only gives you a maximum of 12 jelly beans for your quarter but it was just another one of those projects I make just to see if I could.

The coin box and jar locking ring are only held on with a single screw so this will only keep the honest people honest.

Here you can see the inner workings of the dispenser base. The disk is spun by the use of this worm gear setup and there is a ratchet to keep the handle from spinning the wrong direction.

Another angle minus the dispenser disk.

Exploded View of the main body of the Jelly Bean Machine.

The inner workings of the Coin Slider.

This is how the coin slide mechanism works…

… without a coin the slide with catch on the lock block. (red arrow)

But with a coin inserted the coin will lift the lock block out of the way allowing the slide to work the inter locks.

There are two interlocks that keep the main gear from spinning. The main lock (red arrow) rides in a grove in the bottom of the main gear. While the front lock (green arrow) sticks up between two of the gears teeth to prevent the gear from turning until you push the slide all the way in and then pull it all the way back out. This keeps someone from just pushing the slide in and continuing to turn the handle until all the jelly beans are gone.  (the front lock ended up causing a lot of jams though because there was no way for it to be pulled down so I removed it.)

This shows the grove and lock hole that the main lock rides in. The screws in both interlocks allow for a certain amount of adjustment.

As the slide pushes down on the main lock, springs cause the lock to push back as it is release from the locking hole in the gear. After the gear does a full rotation it seats back in the hole and is pressed forward again. This setup allows you to press the slide in and then pull it right back out. Again to keep someone from just continuing to turn the handle.

Exploded view of the Coin Slide Mechanism.

 In action….

All Information, Pictures, and Material is copyright © 2018 by Stephen Thone and may not be used for any personal or commercial purposes without the consent of the author. All rights reserved. The Author makes no guarantees or warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of, or results to be obtained from accessing and using the Information herein.

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