JP2006026127A - Medium take-out device for game machine or the like - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a medium take-out device which takes out media in a simple and quick manner from a hopper of a game machine etc., therefore reduces labor of a hall employee etc. <P>SOLUTION: The take-out device takes out the media from the hopper which is provided at the game machine or another apparatus, houses token-shaped media and has a medium pay-out means for discharging the prescribed number of media toward a pay-out port of the apparatus. The take-out device has: a medium take-out port 24 formed at a part of the hopper 2; an agitation member 31 provided at the medium take-out port 24 and being rotated while contacting with the media housed in the hopper 2 thereby agitating the media; a driving body 32 for driving the agitation member 31; a medium collecting member 43 for collecting the media taken out from the take-out port 24 with the rotation of the agitation member 31; and a switch means which starts driving of the driving body 32 to rotate the agitation member 31. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a machine such as a gaming machine such as a slot machine or a game machine, a vending machine for selling tickets, beverages, or foodstuffs, and a medal-shaped medium such as a coin or medal is placed inside the device. The present invention relates to a take-out device for taking out from a provided hopper.

As devices that operate with media such as coins and medals, there are gaming machines such as slot machines and game machines and vending machines (hereinafter referred to as gaming machines).
For example, in a slot machine that is a type of gaming machine, when a player inserts a medal as a game medium and presses a start lever, a plurality of reels displaying symbols such as predetermined characters and pictures start to rotate. When the stop button is pressed at an arbitrary timing, the reel is stopped, and a predetermined number of medals are paid out according to the arrangement of the symbols of the stopped reel.

FIG. 6 is a perspective view illustrating a schematic configuration of the slot machine and illustrating a state in which the front door is opened.
The slot machine 1 includes a main body 11, a front door 12 that can be opened and closed with respect to the main body 11, a plurality (usually three) of reels 14 that are rotatably provided inside the main body 11, It has a display window 13 formed on the front door 12 so that the player can visually recognize the displayed symbols.

Below the reel 14, a hopper 15 that accommodates a large number of medals as a medium for playing games is arranged, and a number of medals according to various winnings are discharged from the discharge port 16 on the front surface of the hopper 15 to the payout port 17 of the front door 12. And then provided to the player.
Reference numeral 18 denotes a medal collection box for collecting medals overflowing from the hopper 15, and is arranged adjacent to the hopper 15.

The hopper 15 normally contains thousands of medals, but after the closing of the store or on the day of closing the store, after the end of work, the necessary minimum amount of medals (usually around 500) is left, A medal is taken out from the hopper 15 of each slot machine 1. This work is currently performed by hall employees and the like by opening the front door 12 of each slot machine 1 and scraping medals from the hopper 15 by hand.
Incidentally, for example, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique in which an opening for taking out a medal is formed in the hopper 15 and a medal in the hopper 15 can be taken out by removing a lid of the opening.
Utility model registration No. 3046594

  In the technique described in this document, a medal recovery hole is formed in the bottom wall of a hopper (medal tank), a lid that can be opened and closed is fitted into the medal recovery hole, and the lid is removed from the medal recovery hole. A technique is disclosed in which a medal in a hopper can be taken out by opening a collection hole.

  However, in a hopper that accommodates a large number of medals, even if an opening such as a medal recovery hole is provided at the bottom of the hopper, the medals are not easily discharged. This is because a large number of media mesh with each other at the medal recovery hole, and a “bridge” phenomenon occurs in which the medals cross over the medal recovery hole and continue in a bridging manner.

  FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram for explaining this bridging phenomenon. As shown in the drawing, at the bottom of the hopper 15, individual medals M are stacked in an overlapping state. In this state, when the lid 19a is removed from the medal recovery hole 19, the medal M is intricately and alternately entangled by the weight of the medal at the portion indicated by the symbol I, and a so-called “bridge” is generated.

This bridge becomes stronger as the number of medals M in the hopper 15 increases. Therefore, this bridge is not eliminated by some vibrations and shocks, and it becomes difficult to take out the medal M from the medal recovery hole 19.
Therefore, as the number of remaining medals in the hopper 15 increases, the medals M must be taken out by the hall employee by manually scraping the medals M in the hopper 15.

In order to remove the influence of the bridge, the hole diameter of the medal recovery hole 19 may be increased. However, the larger the hole diameter of the medal recovery hole 19, the more difficult it is to open and close the lid 19a. There is a possibility that the medals M that have been scattered are scattered over a wide area and the workability is deteriorated.
Further, a medal payout device for paying out a predetermined number of medals from the discharge port 16 to the medal payout port 17 is usually provided at the bottom of the hopper 15 when winning. For this reason, it is conceivable to take out the medal payout device 17 from the medal payout port 17 of the slot machine 1, but it is expected that an illegal act of operating the medal payout device and extracting a large number of medals from the hopper will occur. Therefore, it is not preferable for crime prevention.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and it is possible to remove a medium easily from a hopper such as a gaming machine in a short time, and to prevent crimes that can greatly reduce the labor of a hall employee or the like. An object is to provide an excellent medium take-out device.

  In order to achieve the above object, the invention according to claim 1 is provided in a gaming machine or other equipment, and stores a medal-shaped medium and discharges a predetermined number of the medium toward the payout opening at the bottom. In a take-out apparatus for taking out the medium from a hopper provided with a medium discharge means, a medium take-out port formed in a part of the hopper and a medium provided in the medium take-out port and in contact with the medium accommodated in the hopper A stirring member that rotates in a state and stirs the medium, a driving body that rotates the stirring member, a medium recovery unit that recovers the medium taken out from the medium outlet with the rotation of the stirring member, Switch means for starting driving of the driving body and rotating the stirring member.

According to this configuration, when the driving unit is driven by operating the switch unit, the stirring member rotates to stir the medium in contact with the stirring member. Since the medium at the medium outlet is agitated by the rotation of the stirring member, the formation of a bridge is prevented, and the discharge of the medium from the medium outlet can be promoted.
In addition, since the medium discharged from the medium outlet is collected by the medium collecting unit, a large amount of medium taken out from the medium outlet is not provided to the player due to fraud or failure.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, the medium recovery unit is provided inside the main body of the device and recovers the medium overflowed from the hopper.
In a machine such as a slot machine, when a medium such as medals automatically supplied to the hopper exceeds a predetermined amount, the surplus medium overflows from the hopper and is provided inside the apparatus separately from the hopper. It collects in the collection part. Therefore, it is preferable that the recovery unit is used to cause the recovery unit to recover the medium discharged from the hopper by the medium take-out device.

In this case, as described in claim 3, the medium take-out port may be provided in an overflow portion formed in a part of the hopper.
For example, as described in claim 4, the stirring member may be configured by a single plate or a plurality of plate-like bodies.
The stirring member can prevent the formation of a bridge by stirring the medium while rotating.
As described in claim 5, by providing a stirring auxiliary member for stirring the medal in the vicinity of the medium outlet in one end or both ends of the stirring member at one end or both ends of the plate-like member, in a wider range. The medium can be agitated, and the medium can be taken out more smoothly.

The above-described switch means may be one that starts driving of the driving body by manual operation, but automatically starts driving of the driving body by a predetermined condition signal as described in claim 6. There may be.
The predetermined condition signal is, for example, a signal indicating closing of a pachinko hall or the like, an end of work, a signal from a timer, a signal transmitted from a control unit such as a hall computer, etc. A command signal for starting the driving can be given.

  In the present invention, as described in claim 7, the agitating member and the driving body, which are provided at the bottom of the hopper and have the same configuration as the medium dispensing means for dispensing a predetermined number of media at the time of winning, etc. It is also possible to use it.

Since the medium take-out apparatus of the present invention is configured as described above, it is possible to efficiently take out and collect the medium from the hopper by driving the drive body at the end of the work. Since this work can be performed with almost no trouble for the hall employee or the like, the burden on the hall employee or the like can be greatly reduced.
In addition, since the media is not collected from the media outlet facing the player but collected by the media collection unit inside the equipment body, the media removed from the hopper due to fraud or malfunction of the media ejection device may be removed. It is not provided to the player from the medium payout slot.

Hereinafter, a preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view in which a part of a hopper provided with a medal picking device is broken according to an embodiment of the present invention.
In the following description, a slot machine will be described as an example of a device such as a gaming machine or a vending machine, but the present invention is not limited to a gaming machine such as a pachinko or other game machine, a ticket or a beverage, It can also be applied to vending machines that sell foods. In the following description, the slot machine of FIG. 6 will be referred to as appropriate.

Also in this embodiment, as in the slot machine shown in FIG. 6, the hopper 2 that accommodates many medals as game media is provided below the reel 14 inside the main body 11 of the slot machine.
The hopper 2 is formed in a substantially funnel shape that inclines toward the bottom. In the center of the bottom portion, a medal payout device 21 for paying out the number of medals according to the type of winning a prize from the hopper 2 is provided.

  The medal payout device 21 includes a disk-shaped rotor 22 that rotates about a rotation shaft 22 a and a motor (not shown) that rotates the rotor 22. A plurality of (five in the illustrated example) circular holes 23 that are slightly larger than the medals accommodated in the hopper 2 are formed in the rotor 22 concentrically. Then, when the motor 22 is driven and the rotor 22 is rotated, a predetermined number of medals fall under the hopper 2 through the circular hole 23 for each rotation of the rotor 22, and enter the discharge port 26. It is discharged towards. The medals discharged to the discharge port 26 are provided to the player from the payout port 17 (see FIG. 6) of the front door 12.

  The hopper 2 of the slot machine has a sufficient capacity so that the medals do not run out during the game. An overflow portion 24 is formed in a part of the side surface of the hopper 2 so as to be cut out vertically so as to discharge surplus medals out of the hopper 2 when the amount of medals in the hopper 2 exceeds a certain amount. ing.

  In this embodiment, the medal picking device 3 is provided below the overflow unit 24. A part of the lower portion of the overflow unit 24 is configured as a medal outlet.

As shown in FIG. 1, the medal removal device 3 includes a substantially semicircular recess 25 that is provided in a side surface of the hopper 2 below the overflow portion 24, and a rectangular shape that rotates within the recess 25. It has a stirring plate 31 and a motor 32 as a driving body for rotating the stirring plate 31.
The rotating shaft 32a of the motor 32 is located at the approximate center of the semicircular recess 25, and the stirring plate 31 is attached to the rotating shaft 32a at the center. When the motor 32 is driven, the stirring plate 31 rotates in the recess 25 so as to scrape out medals from the hopper 2.

  The motor 32 is attached to the side surface of the hopper 2 by an attachment member (not shown) so as not to prevent the medal discharged from the overflow part 24 from dropping. As the motor 32, a motor that can rotate the rotating shaft 32a at a predetermined rotational speed may be selected, and a servo motor, a stepping motor, or the like may be used in addition to a motor having a speed reduction mechanism.

The motor 32 can be driven and stopped by a switch (not shown). For example, the switch may be installed on the side surface of the hopper 2 or the inner wall surface of the main body 11 (see FIG. 6) of the slot machine so that the hall employee can manually operate by opening the front door 12.
Alternatively, the drive start timing of the motor 32 may be set in advance in the control device of the slot machine using a timer or the like, and the motor 32 may be driven to take out medals in the hopper 2 when a predetermined time comes. it can.
Further, the motor 32 may be driven simultaneously for a plurality of slot machines by transmitting a predetermined command signal from the hall computer.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining the operation of the medal taking-out apparatus having the above-described configuration, and is a view of the state in which the stirring plate rotates as viewed from the front.
When the motor 32 is driven, the stirring plate 31 starts to rotate in the direction indicated by the arrow in the figure. Since the stirring plate 31 is provided on the bottom side surface of the hopper 2, the medals in the hopper 2 are stirred out while the stirring plate 31 is rotated, and the medals are scraped out from the overflow unit 24.

  In this way, the medal is scraped while being stirred by the rotation of the stirring plate 31, so that no bridge is generated in the medal and the medal is smoothly discharged from the overflow unit 24.

FIGS. 3A and 3B show another embodiment of the medal removal device, in which FIG. 3A is a perspective view and FIG. 3B is a side view illustrating details of the stirring rod. In FIG. 3, the same members and the same parts as those of the previous embodiment are denoted by the same reference numerals.
In the medal removal device 3 ′ of this embodiment, as shown in FIG. 3A, the stirring rod 31 a as a stirring auxiliary member extending along the inner surface of the side wall of the hopper 2 at both ends of the stirring plate 31 of the above embodiment. 31a are attached. The stirring rods 31a and 31a are formed in an appropriate length so as not to come into contact with the inner surface of the hopper 2 when the stirring plate 31 rotates, and are slightly inclined upward with respect to the axis C of the stirring plate 31. It is formed as follows. As the stirring plate 31 rotates, the medals around the recess 25 are stirred by the stirring rods 31a and 31a.
According to this embodiment, medals in a wider range than the previous embodiment can be agitated, and there is an advantage that medals can be taken out from the overflow unit 24 more smoothly.

The configuration of the medal removal device according to the present invention is not limited to the above-described configuration as long as the medal located near the medal extraction port can be stirred and the medal can be taken out while preventing the generation of the bridge. Can choose.
FIG. 4 is an explanatory view of still another embodiment of the medal removal device.
In this embodiment, a medal picking device 3 ″ having the same configuration as the medal paying device 21 provided at the bottom of the hopper 2 is provided below the overflow portion 24. The medal picking device 3 ″ is configured as the medal picking device 3 ″. As the rotor 35 rotates, the medals are discharged from the overflow section 24 through the circular hole 36 and the groove 2a.

The medals discharged out of the hopper 2 by the medal take-out devices 3, 3 ′, 3 ″ having the above-described configuration can be collected in a medal collection unit provided at the bottom of the main body of the slot machine.
In the example shown in FIG. 5, surplus medals discharged from the overflow unit 24 by the medal take-out device 3 are received by a medal receiver 41 provided at the bottom of the main body 11 adjacent to the hopper 2. Then, the medal received by the medal receiver 41 has a sufficiently larger inner diameter than the medal and passes through the transport hose 42 inserted through the through hole 11a formed in the bottom of the main body 11, and the gantry 12 on which the main body 11 is placed. The tokens are collected on a medal collection conveyor 43.
With this configuration, a dedicated collection box for collecting the medals taken out by the medal picking device 3 is not required, and the medals are stored in the medal collection tank that stores the medals collected by the medal collection conveyor 43. Since it can only be taken out, it is preferable from the viewpoint of crime prevention. Further, medals picked up from a large number of slot machines can be automatically collected at one place by the medal collection conveyor 43, which is convenient.
In the example of FIG. 5, only the medal picking device 3 shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 is shown, but the same applies to the medal picking devices 3 ′ and 3 ″ shown in FIGS.

Although a preferred embodiment of the present invention has been described, the present invention is not limited to the above description.
For example, in the above description, the medals picked up by the medal picking devices 3, 3 ′, 3 ″ are described as being collected by the medal collecting conveyor 43 for collecting overflowed medals, but the medal picking devices 3, 3 ′. , 3 ″ may be collected in a medal collection box arranged adjacent to the hopper 2.
1 and 3, the stirring plate 31 is formed from a single plate-like body, but the stirring plate 31 may be formed from a plurality of plate-like bodies. Also in this case, a stirring bar 31 a as shown in FIG. 3 may be attached to all of the plurality of stirring plates 31 or a part of the plurality of stirring plates 31.

  The present invention is applicable to gaming machines such as game machines and slot machines as well as vending machines that sell tickets, beverages, foodstuffs, etc., as long as they operate using coins and medals as a medium. is there.

It is the perspective view which fractured | ruptured a part of hopper provided with the medal removal apparatus concerning one Embodiment of this invention. It is a figure explaining the effect | action of a medal removal apparatus, and is a front view which shows a mode that a stirring plate rotates. It is explanatory drawing of other embodiment of a medal removal apparatus. It is explanatory drawing of other embodiment of a medal removal apparatus. It is a figure which shows an example of the medal collection part which collects the medal taken out by the medal removal apparatus. It is a figure explaining schematic structure of a slot machine, and is a perspective view showing the state where the front door was opened. It is a figure explaining the problem at the time of taking out a medal described in patent documents 1, and is a schematic diagram explaining the state where medals were intertwined in the shape of a bridge.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Slot machine 11 Main body 12 Front door 15 Hopper 16 Discharge port 17 Discharge port 2 Hopper 22 Rotor 23 Circular hole 24 Overflow part 25 Recess 3 Medal taking-out device 31 Stirring plate 31a Stirring bar (stirring auxiliary member)
32 Motor 32a Rotating shaft 35 Rotor 36 Circular hole 41 Medal receiver 42 Transport hose 43 Medal recovery conveyor

Claims (7)

In a take-out device that is provided in a gaming machine or other equipment and that takes out a medal-shaped medium and takes out the medium from a hopper provided with a medium discharge means for discharging a predetermined number of the medium toward a discharge port at the bottom ,
A medium outlet formed in a part of the hopper;
A stirring member provided at the medium take-out port, rotating in contact with the medium stored in the hopper, and stirring the medium;
A driving body for rotating the stirring member;
A medium recovery unit for recovering the medium taken out from the medium outlet with the rotation of the stirring member;
Switch means for starting driving of the driving body to rotate the stirring member;
A medium take-out apparatus comprising:   The medium ejecting apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the medium collecting unit is provided inside a main body of the device and collects the medium overflowed from the hopper.   3. The medium take-out apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the medium take-out port is provided in an overflow section that discharges excess medium from the hopper.   The medium take-out apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the stirring member includes a single or a plurality of plate-like bodies.   The medium take-out apparatus according to claim 4, wherein a stirring auxiliary member that stirs a medal near the medium take-out port is provided at one end or both ends of the plate-like body.   6. The medium ejecting apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the switch means starts driving the driving body in accordance with a predetermined condition signal.   The medium take-out apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the stirring member and the driving body have the same configuration as the medium take-out means.

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