US 1c (penny) mechs?

[gork]

I am getting my cabinet finished up and was entertaining ideas for making the experience as true to life as possible. Obviously, the frantic grabbing for the quarter and shoving it into the coin door (without it being rejected) in time was a lot of that. Pushing a button to simulate the coin insert doesn't really simulate this very well. Wiring up the reject buttons to a microswitch so you at least have to fumble around at the coin door does a better job, but it's still not quite there (plus it is harder to construct).

I also (for obvious reasons) don't want to either charge people to play the cabinet, nor do I want to leave a bucket of quarters sitting out. What I'd like is 1c mechs. I can't find any though. The smallest US mech I can find is a 5c mech.

Does anyone make a penny mech? Where can I get one?

[jelloslug]

Do what I did:  Buy some used tokens off of ebay (I got 500 for somthing like $10 or so) and get (or modify) a mech to accept them.  Gives you a nice "clink" in the coin bucket without having a bole of quarters sitting around.

[TheTick]

Or screw with the quater mech so it will accept all coins. i.e. remove magnet, and tension spring, etc.

[Thenasty]

or for $10.00 you get a coin mech along with 200 tokens. Just pop in the coin mech and have tokens out for the players.

[Stingray]

Do what I did:  Buy some used tokens off of ebay (I got 500 for somthing like $10 or so) and get (or modify) a mech to accept them.  Gives you a nice "clink" in the coin bucket without having a bole of quarters sitting around.

This is exactly what I intend to do once I get that far along. I agree with the original poster, pushing a credit button just isn't the same as actually dropping a coin in the slot. Buying tokens seems a great idea, because I know that if I kept a bucket of quarters around, I'd eventually feed them all to the soda machine at work.

-S

[gork]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. It's too bad there's not an easy swap-in mech for accepting pennies and rejecting other coins. I suppose that modifying my existing mechs to accept all coins will be the simplest avenue to accepting 1c pieces. I will also look for tokens on ebay.

With real penny mechs I could have called it "Penny Arcade" hahaha!

[Chris]

Or screw with the quater mech so it will accept all coins. i.e. remove magnet, and tension spring, etc.

Are there any good instructions out there on how to do this? I seem to recall that there are issues with nickels because of their thickness...

--Chris

[NoOne=NBA=]

How are you planning to pay for your next upgrade with pennies?

That's the main reason I have a coin door on mine.
When I need an upgrade, I just dig into the quarter bucket.

[TheTick]

Someone posted here a while back about how he had to file the insides on the entry. From the looks of my mech, it just passes thru. Pobably just rip everything out except the little spring switch at the botttom.

[Chris]

That would make for a great piggy bank.  I have a switch inside the coin door that I can use to cut off the "free play" switches (currently wired to the coin reject buttons)...

[Lilwolf]

I ripped everything out of my mech and added straws to make sure that all coins go through the right slot.  

So it takes all coins... real or fake.... pennies or quarters (1/2 dollars don't fit... but susan b's and the new dollar coins do).

[AlanS17]

Well the coin validator and the actual switch are seperate mechanisms. Theoretically (as far as I can tell) , the coin validator could be replaced by a simple chute to drop the coin past the switch... click!

[Ken Layton]

Alas, nobody makes a mechanical penny acceptor anymore. All those slot machines at casinos that take pennies use an electronic coin validator retrofit made by Coin Mech and other manufacturers. Some of these units use a coin "sample" holder that you put a sample coin into and then presto---that's what denomination it accepts.

These kits will fit game coin doors.