A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright or mask work protection. The copyright or mask work owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright or mask work rights whatsoever.
The present invention is related to the following co-pending U.S. Patent applications which are all commonly owned with the present application, the entire contents of each being hereby incorporated herein by reference thereto: (1) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/684,904, entitled “Double Thick Vending Machine Stack Wall,” filed on Apr. 13, 2015.
This disclosure relates to structures used in vending machines as stack walls to separate one set of products from another set of product inside the product holding area of a vending machine.
This invention relates to vending machines, and in particular, to vending machines that can be stocked with vertical stacks of vendable products and with vertical stacks of products retained in columns in a product storage area therein.
Vertical stacks are one way to store and dispense products in vending machines and for many products is an efficient and effective way to store a maximum number of products. This is an important as the more items that can be stored in the machine the less often is the need to restock.
In a vending machine, internal column walls are employed to define a plurality of spaced apart, product storage magazines, zones or compartments. More specifically, a series of stacking walls are arranged at spaced positions within a vending cabinet and serve as partitions to contain, separate, and support a stack or vertically extending column of products to be dispensed, with that stack usually having a row of products that is two, three or four products in length. Not only are varying sized products frequently held in these magazines, but when new products are restocked in a particular compartment they may well have individual lengths that are different from the product previously held in that compartment. Consequently, there is a need for a back portion of each magazine, zone or compartment that can be moved forwardly or rearwardly to thereby vary the depth of each zone or compartment and thereby accommodate a new length for the product being restocked. Thus, when reloading a compartment with a new product having a different length it is now easy to move the rear retainer wall to a desired position to accommodate the new length for a row of a new product.
Prior art containment walls were primarily formed from sheet metal. To strengthen the sheet metal wall the outer edges might be bent or shaped to provide added perimeter strength and the central portions might be stiffened by various bracing components which could extend fore-to-aft or diagonally along the wall and are mechanically fastened to the respective column walls to ensure proper function.
A co-pending application Ser. No. 14/684,904 concerns a novel double wall stacking wall or retainer wall from which these magazines or zones within a product holding area of a vending machine can be constructed, and is hereby incorporated herein by reference thereto. This double wall construction now permits a novel and unique way of designing such a movable rear retainer wall for use with such vending machine product holding magazines, zones or compartments.
The invention is better understood by reading the following detailed description with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
To gain a better understanding of the invention, a preferred embodiment will now be described in detail. Frequent reference will be made to the drawings. Reference numerals or letters will be used throughout to indicate certain parts or locations in the drawings. The same reference numerals or letters will be used to indicate the same parts and locations throughout the drawings, unless otherwise indicated.
The preferred embodiment now described will be with respect to a vending machine and to separate various sets or groupings of products from each other within the interior of a vending machine. The scale of the embodiment, therefore, is to be understood with respect to this type of article. It is to be understood as well, however, that the invention is applicable to other articles and its scale can vary accordingly.
With reference to
The front door 14 includes a front panel 30 that is retained in a frame formed from opposing sides 34 and 36, a top 38 and a bottom or base plate 40. Door 14 also includes and supports a coin changer including a change return 42, a suitable keypad 43, a control panel 44, a display 45, and a dispensed product retrieval opening 50. Door 14 has sufficient internal space to mount other parts of the vending machine such as, for example, control electronics, the coin changer assembly, a bill validator 46, or other devices as may be desired. The front panel 30 can also include exemplary bottles 60 and bottle selection buttons 62 and exemplary cans 64 and can selection buttons 66.
The vending machine 10 includes a product holding section 21, as shown in
Located below the product holding section 21 is a drop zone area 52 at the bottom of which is a product directing ramp or panel 54 that is an angled sheet, for example of metal or plastic, whose angle of inclination from back to front will direct a dispensed product falling from the product holding section 21 forwardly through a swinging door 51 and toward a front product retrieval area 56 and onto floor 58 thereof from which the selected and dispensed product can be retrieved via the opening 50.
The vending machine 10 can also include a suitable vend detection or sensing system. One such system is shown in phantom at 70 is a vibration sensor attached to the bottom side of ramp or plate 54 to sense when a product has fallen onto that ramp or plate 54. A vend sensing system could also be of an infrared type as is diagrammatically shown generally at 72 in
Each of the stacking walls 80A-80k, as shown in
Panels 100/102 are preferably mated using rivets 105 that are placed in the center of the dimples with the combined height each dimple 110 forming a distance between panels 100/102 that is preferably about 0.344 inches, although other thickness dimensions could vary form about 0.040 inches to about 0.750 inches. Each panel 100/102 can be preferably formed from 0.028 inch thick sheet metal, but the sheet metal could be as thin as 0.015 inches, and they could be formed from thicker material that the preferred 0.028 inch thickness, for example 0.100 inches.
It should be understood that a variety of edge forming arrangements can be employed such as two short flanges that meet along a flange edge or curved or rounded flanges might be used that could then inter fit, or the flanges might be formed with a plurality of spaced apart flanges or flange segments, while the mating panel would have a similar structure but with its spaced apart flanges or segments formed so that its sets of flanges could interfit with or into the adjacent gaps or spaces in the first panel. It should also be understood that mating edges could be welded, spot welded, glued or to the extent there is a seam between the panels that seam could smoothed or rounded. Alternatively the mating edges could be left alone that would still form an outer edge of the stacking walls 80A-80K when the panels, for example ‘100 and 102, are mated together.
By forming the stacking walls in this manner they have sufficient strength to fully support products stacked in the compartments 92A-92J as shown in
As shown in
Each of the stacking or retaining walls 80A/80K can be fabricated from two panels as shown, for example in
With reference to
There are also upper and lower power links 160 and 162, with the upper power link 160 pivotally connected to the upper control member 132 at a pivot joint 164, while the lower power link 162 is pivotally connected to the lower control member 136 at a pivot joint 166. The opposite end of power link 160 is pivotally connected at a pivot joint 168 to a spring clip 170, that can either be integrally formed with the power link 160 or provided as a separate added member, that has a width that is wider than a slot 180 provided in the rear portion of panel 100 that is spaced about 3 inches below the top edge 112. A lower slot 182 is provided in the rear portion of panel 100 and is located about 8 inches above bottom edge 114. The lower power link 162 has its opposite end pivotally connected at a pivot joint 172 to another spring clip 174, that again can either be integrally formed with the power link 160 or provided as a separate added member, and which is wider than lower slot 182.
As shown in
As shown in
It should be appreciated that handle 133 could also be located in a different location. For example, handle 133 could be formed as a part of the lower control member 136 and extend outwardly beyond the front edge 116 on which suitable teeth, like those shown at 111, could also be provided to act as incremental stops for the handle 133 as the adjustable rear wall 120 is moved to one of a plurality of stop locations or be moved incrementally to change and control the depth of the compartment holding bottles or cans.
As the upper control member 132 is rotated each of the two control links 140/142 will be moved through their respective pivot connections 144/146 and 148/150 that will cause the lower control member 136 to also rotate about its pivot connection 138. As each of the upper and lower control members 132/136 rotate each will move its power link, 160 and 162 that will in turn move the upper and lower portions of the adjustable rear wall 120 causing wall 120 to slide along the exterior of wall 80A, for example, and be movable to define a desired compartment depth, for example in the compartment between stacking walls 80A and 80B, and then simply locked in place via handle 133 and teeth 111. Since handle 133 and the opening 103 will be located at the forward portion of each of the stacking or retaining walls 80A/80K the position of the rear compartment wall 120 for any of the compartments defined between any two adjacent stacking walls can be easily adjusted from the front of each stacking wall 80A/80K as used in the product holding portion 21 when door 14 is open. It should be understood, with reference to
An alternative embodiment is shown in
The upper control member 222 is pivotally attached to wall 80A-1 at a pivot joint 240 and the lower control member 224 is attached a t a pivot joint 242. The control link 226 is attached by a pivot joint 244 to the upper control member and at a pivot joint 246 to the lower control member 224. The upper power link 228 is connected to the upper control member at a pivot joint 248 and pivot joint 250 provides the connection between the lower power link 230 and the lower control member 224.
As shown in both
It should also be understood that the stacking walls 80A-80K could also be formed, for example, from a stiffened single sheet structure with the adjustable mechanism being then connected, for example, as shown herein to that single sheet, but not within a hollow interior of a double walled stacking wall structure.
While the panels are preferably formed from sheet metal, they can also be made from a variety of materials including plastics, polycarbonate, reinforced plastics, or they could be formed as a solid structure in which internal voids could be formed as desired.
When introducing elements of various aspects of the present invention or embodiments thereof, the articles “a,” “an,” “the” and “said” are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements, unless stated otherwise. The terms “comprising,” “including” and “having,” and their derivatives, are intended to be open-ended terms that specify the presence of the stated features, elements, components, groups, and/or steps, but do not exclude the presence of other unstated features, elements, components, groups, and/or steps and mean that there may be additional features, elements, components, groups, and/or steps other than those listed. Moreover, the use of “top” and “bottom,” “front” and “rear,” “above,” and “below” and variations thereof and other terms of orientation are made for convenience, but does not require any particular orientation of the components. The terms of degree such as “substantially,” “about” and “approximate,” and any derivatives, as used herein mean a reasonable amount of deviation of the modified term such that the end result is not significantly changed. For example, these terms can be construed as including a deviation of at least +/−5% of the modified term if this deviation would not negate the meaning of the word it modifies.
While the invention has been described in connection with what is presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to the disclosed embodiment, but on the contrary, is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.
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20160300423 A1 | Oct 2016 | US |