Vending Machine Transaction Mechanism

Abstract

The vast change of social market to purchase products and/or services motivates engineers to continuously searching for solutions that provides convenience to the society at reasonable price. One of the solutions is vending machine where it can be a platform of transaction at minimal inventory and human power. Thus, it is essential to have reliable and robust vending machine especially its transaction mechanism. This paper discusses the conceptual design of a vending machine of cash based transaction mechanism. The mechanism prototype has been developed and fabricated using a Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printer; in which its filament material is PLA. This prototype has been tested continuously using 10 cents, 20 cents and 50 cents (different generations) randomly. The results showed that the successive rate of sorting 10 cents is the lowest among all. This is mainly caused by hopper position leading to insufficient time for servo motor to react to the intended action on time. The comprehensive mechanical design and decision making logic would be further discussed in this paper.