While building the wooden prototype in the post below, I learned some valuable lessons about this whole project. First off, it turns out that condoms are pretty good at self-organizing, but only if there's a dimension that's only slightly larger than their width -- Too wide, and they get caught diagonally. Too narrow, and they jam or don't slide smoothly. Second, I realized that I'd solved most of the issues of inventory storage with this prototype, but vending was still problematic at times. Looking for a simpler approach, that only involved one user input, I decided to apply methods from this design to a new, unified inventory system for the original sheet metal "soaring dragon" design. By replacing the expensive and complex inventory chutes with a single plywood-and-plexiglass design, I reduced the sheet metal parts count by 6, the hardware count by over 25, and the cost of sheet metal manufacture by about 50%. This is significant, I feel, now there's only one major sheet metal component left in the system -- the external shell, which, while the largest, is also the simplest in terms of cuts and dimensions.
I'm adjusting the height of the slot at the bottom -- I think this is the major contributing factor to the persistent trying to vend 1 1/2 condoms problem I'm encountering with every design I've worked on.
If this doesn't iron things out, I'll re-evaluate the geometry of the contact between the condoms and the cam gears -- apart from trying them the other way, I perhaps can move things around to give a better engagement angle.
Pictures to come shortly.
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