Thanks to pledges from our members we were able to acquire our first, second hand, vending machine in June 2011.
Quick details
Westomatic
6 shelves, 31 vent slots
Missing the coin mech, about £100 off eBay to replace
Missing lock, £12 off eBay
Seller said there was an issue with the refrigeration unit, something about a probe (possible temperature probe --'RepRap' Matt)
MCU is a MC68HC11E1CFN2 ('RepRap' Matt I have a few 68HC11E1CFN3's of we ever wanted to swap out for our own logic)
All Coin mech's use a common protocol called the Multi-Drop Bus, pdf of this here: File:MDB 3.0.pdf
Adding RFID payment using same members cards as use for Gatekeeper
This is made very easy due to the MDB spec
Looks like firmware might be stores on the UV erasable EPROM chip next to the MCU
Vending machine dimensions
There are two sizes of slot in the vending machine. I'll call them big and small. The max dimensions are as follows:
Big: 135mm width x 160mm high x 40mm depth
Small: 60mm width x 120mm high x 20mm depth
We should ensure that all kits/packets to be sold are within these dimensions.
A C6 envelope (designed to hold a 1/4 sheet of A4 (A6 size) piece of paper is 114mm x 162mm. This will probably fit in fine.
The labels for the slots are 19mm high (so you can do prices and other labels).
Current status
The vending machine was fitted with a custom cashless device, and has been in operation since early/mid 2012.
Also see a 2014 Computerphile Youtube video with the vending machine in it.
