I've been quite busy assembling and setting up this prototype, among other things. Quite a bit of news:
First, I've retrieved the case from our outsourced water-jetter. He'd decided that lasercutting would be the more efficient process for the material, given the thinness. All told it was a hefty bill, but the components came back beautiful:
I'm quite pleased for my first time working with sheet metal or doing sheet metal design. I've already found a number of improvements and cost-saving measures to take on any future iterations, including eliminating four components and simplifying the design of the inventory chutes. I can also greatly reduce the amount of hardware needed in this way.
After a few nervous hours in the machine shop, carefully bending the super-expensive steel all to hell, I cranked out something vaguely resembling a condom vending machine:
This picture doesn't really do it justice -- the parts look stunning honestly, the steel is very nice. Here I've got everything bent and spot welded, and ready to be assembled.
These are the two inventory chutes, and three of the four brackets which the chutes mount with. I think I can eliminate the brackets from the design, I'll try to incorporate that in the next revision.
Bearing bracket. I was really pleased with how this worked, the sheet metal origami really worked exactly as hoped, it's quite sturdy.
This is the (slightly inaccurate) cutout for the coin mechanism. I forgot to dimension a small slot at the top of the mechanism, which I've now got to cut out of the panel somehow -- the stainless steel is repelling most tools, and broke one pair of wire clippers already. I may have to break out a hacksaw. I'm also considering switching to Aluminum in the future -- it's easier to bend, far lighter, and approximately the same cost. Also easier to cut, which might mean I could use a less powerful (i.e. readily accessible and no labor fees) laser cutter.
I've also been assembling the crankshaft, which is pretty simple -- slip the cogs onto a section of Al-6061 rod, press the bearings into the mounts, and bolt it all together. It's installed here.
Closeup of installed crankshaft. I have to adopt some unorthodox methods to tighten a few of the bolts, this is an improvement to the design I can implement -- quite a few of the bolts aren't hard to get to, but they aren't pleasant. That's one of those things which is hard to anticipate in CAD modeling, but becomes very apparent in real life.
I've since finished assembling the device, new pictures and info to come shortly. A little creative persuasion was needed to get a few things like they should be, more on that later. Things look good though, and with a few last steps, I should be ready for actual testing very very soon.
