JP4946586B2 - vending machine - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention comprises an outer door on the front surface of the main body cabinet, and a cold or a product that is sent out from a product rack in the warehouse at the time of sale to a product outlet of the outer door by an XY transport mechanism equipped in the machine. It relates to a vending machine for hot products.

As a vending machine described above, after defining a product storage box surrounded by a heat insulating wall inside the main body cabinet with an outer door with a transparent glass on the front, A product rack constructed with a number of columns arranged in the lower and left and right rows, and the front side of the product rack is equipped with a transport bucket mounted on an XY transport mechanism that moves along the vertical and horizontal coordinate axes. Based on this, the transport bucket is accessed from the standby position to the designated column, and after receiving the goods discharged from the column, the product is returned to the standby position, and the goods received in the transport bucket is sent out to the product outlet provided in the outer door. There is known a vending machine that can be carried out (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
In the vending machine described above, in order to prevent the cool air inside the product stored in the product storage room from leaking outside, an insulated inner door is arranged inside the outer door to open the open surface of the product storage room. After closing the (front), this insulated inner door is provided with a flapper type small door in the carry-out passage leading to the product outlet of the outer door, and the product sent out from the transport bucket at the time of sale is the small door The door is pushed open to be taken out to the product outlet.
JP-A-10-302140

By the way, in the conventional vending machine described above, in order to suppress the cold air leakage in the warehouse as much as possible, the small door for carrying out the product (flapper type door) provided in the heat insulating inner door is closed by a biasing spring or the like. The pressing force is applied. On the other hand, in this type of vending machine, it is desired that a plurality of types of products can be sold regardless of the product weight. For this reason, if the small door is pressed and urged in the closing direction with a strong spring force, it becomes difficult for a light product to push open the small door with its own weight. Therefore, in order to make it possible to sell light products in the past, the small door pressure biasing force was set to be weak at the expense of some thermal insulation performance, and the products delivered from the transport bucket pushed the small doors open. To be taken out to the product outlet.
However, if the force that presses the flapper-type small door toward the closed position is weakened, a gap is generated between the small door and the door seat surface, and the cool air inside the box easily escapes outward. Moreover, since leakage of cold inside the cabinet causes an increase in power consumption of the refrigerator, there is a need for an improvement measure that can reliably prevent the cold inside the cabinet from leaking out of the product discharge passage in the standby state. Yes.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above points, and its purpose is to reliably prevent leakage of cool air in the store in a standby state without impairing the operation of carrying out the product from the store to the product outlet. The purpose is to provide a vending machine with an improved in-machine structure so that the heat insulation performance can be improved.

In order to achieve the above object, according to the present invention, after defining a product storage box surrounded by a heat insulating wall inside a main body cabinet having an outer door on the front surface, Is equipped with a product rack constructed by a number of columns arranged in the upper and lower stages and the left and right columns, and a transport bucket mounted on the XY transport mechanism on the front side of the product rack. In the vending machine, the product returned to the standby position after receiving the product discharged from the column by accessing the product, and the product received in the bucket at this position is carried out to the product outlet provided in the outer door. After opening the entrance / exit of the transport bucket in the heat insulating side wall of the product storage, the entrance / exit is closed by the transport bucket itself moved to the standby position at the time of sale standby (claim 1). UNA make up in the manner.
(1) The transport bucket is configured to have a conveyor mechanism at the bottom of the cradle having a U-shaped cross section, and a bucket doorway is opened in the heat insulating side wall of the product storage in accordance with the outer size of the cradle side wall. .
(2) Inside the main body cabinet, a product delivery space is defined on the side of the product storage, and the product delivered from the transport bucket is placed behind the product outlet provided on the outer door. A product takeout shooter that leads to the product is provided, and the product sent out from the carryout bucket through the shooter is taken out to the product takeout port.
(3) The open surface of the product storage is closed with an outer door disposed on the front surface of the main body cabinet, and heat insulating glass is laid on the outer door as glass for interior perspective.

With the above configuration, when the vending machine is in a standby state, the bucket cradle mounted on the XY transport mechanism and moved to the standby position is opened to the heat insulation side wall of the product storage (the product delivery path). Is blocked). As a result, XY conveyance during sales operations is prevented while preventing leakage of cold inside the cabinet without providing a small door in the product carry-out passage leading from the product storage closed with the heat-insulated inner door as in the conventional structure. The product delivered from the product rack by the moving operation of the mechanism can be received in the transport bucket and transported in the machine, and sent out to the product take-out port through the bucket entrance.
Moreover, since the transport bucket is driven by an electric X-Y transport mechanism, it is rubbed when the transport bucket passes through the bucket doorway opened in the heat insulation wall of the product storage during sales operation, and some sliding resistance is added. However, the transfer operation of the bucket is not hindered, and thereby the clearance between the bucket entrance and the transfer bucket can be set to the minimum, and leakage of the cool air in the cabinet can be suppressed.

  In addition, the outer door placed on the front of the main cabinet closes the open surface of the product storage, and heat-insulating glass is used for the see-through glass installed on the outer door. The housing structure of the main body cabinet can be simplified by omitting the provided heat-insulating inner door.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below based on the examples shown in FIGS. 1 is an external view of the vending machine with the outer door opened, FIG. 2 is a front view, FIGS. 3A and 3B are a longitudinal front view and a longitudinal side view of FIG. 4 (a) to (c) are detailed structural views of an XY transport mechanism and a transport bucket equipped in the machine.
First, in FIGS. 1 to 3, 1 is a main body cabinet of a vending machine, 2 is an outer door, 3 is a commodity storage box that is defined inside the main body cabinet 1 by surrounding a periphery excluding the front surface with a heat insulating wall 3a, 4 is a product rack constructed by arranging a large number of columns 4a in upper and lower stages and left and right columns, and 5 is a transparent heat insulating glass (for example, transparent glass) provided on the outer door 2 so that the state of the product storage 3 can be seen from the front. A glass of heat insulation structure in which two transparent glasses are combined and evacuated between them), 6 is arranged in front of the product rack 4 and moves up, down, left and right (Details of the XY transport mechanism) 4 is described in FIG. 4), 7 is a transport bucket mounted on the XY transport mechanism 6, 8 is a commodity outlet provided at the lower part of the outer door 2, and 9 is a coin mech installed on the back side of the outer door 2. 10 is a building validator, 11 is a door lock, 12 A refrigerator for mounting the inside the refrigerator refrigeration to the base portion of the main body cabinet, and is connected by the evaporator 12a which is deployed in the compartment (see FIG. 3) and a pipe (not shown). In addition, in each column 4 a of the product rack 4, products 13 are stored side by side.

The outer door 2 is laid with a sealing gasket on the periphery on the back side, and when the outer door 2 is closed, the gasket is pressed against the front periphery of the product storage case 3 to open the open surface (front surface). While being closed, the inside of the cabinet can be seen through from the front through the transparent heat insulating glass 5 disposed on the outer door 2.
Moreover, about the said product storage 3, the bucket doorway 3b in which the conveyance bucket 7 moves to the left-right direction and moves in / out is opened in the side wall lower part of the heat insulation wall 3a. Further, the outer door 2 is provided with a carry-out shooter 8a that is connected to the product outlet 8 and protrudes behind the door. The carry-out shooter 8a is defined on the side of the product storage 3 with the outer door 2 closed. The product is projected into the product delivery space and confronts the transport bucket 7 below.
Next, the detailed structures of the XY transport mechanism 6 and the transport bucket 7 described above are shown in FIGS. That is, the XY transport mechanism 6 is guided so as to be movable in the left-right direction across the upper rail 6a and the lower rail 6b fixed to the upper and lower ends of the warehouse, and between the upper rail 6a and the lower rail 6b. The carrying bucket 7 is mounted on the bracket 6d using the vertical rail 6c and the bracket 6d guided so as to be movable in the vertical direction along the vertical rail 6c, and carried by the drive motor and the rack and pinion mechanism as described below. The bucket 7 is configured to move in the left and right (X axis) and up and down (Y axis) directions.

That is, the vertical rail 6c and the bracket 6d are each guided and held by the mating rail via the guide roller 6e. A rack 6f is laid along each rail along its longitudinal direction, and a pinion 6g meshing with the rack 6f and a drive motor (stepping motor) 6h connected to the pinion 6g are provided on the vertical rail 6c and the bracket 6d. Equipped. Here, when a movement command is given to the drive motor 6h, the transport bucket 7 coupled to the bracket 6d moves up and down and left and right in response to the command.
Moreover, the conveyance bucket 7 becomes a structure provided with the belt-type conveyor 14 in the bottom part of the U-shaped cradle 7a like illustration. In addition, 14a is a conveyor motor.
With the above configuration, when the vending machine is on standby for sale, the transport bucket 7 mounted on the XY transport mechanism 6 is stopped at the standby position shown in FIGS. The bucket inlet / outlet 3b opened to the heat insulating side wall 3a is closed by the cradle side wall of the transport bucket 7 to prevent leakage of cool air in the cabinet. In addition, the bucket entrance 3b opened to the heat insulation side wall 3a of the product storage 3 is formed according to the outer size of the cradle side wall of the transport bucket 7, and in this standby position, the cradle side wall of the transport bucket 7 is connected to the bucket entrance 3b. It is fitted with almost no gap in between, and the space between the inside and the outside of the box is shielded.

  When a sales command is given from this sales standby state, the drive motor 6h of the XY transport mechanism 6 is started to access the transport bucket 7 to the designated column 4a of the product rack 4, and at this position forward from the column 4a. The dispensed product 13 is received in the transport bucket 7. When the delivery of the product 13 is completed, the XY transport mechanism 6 reversely follows the access movement path to return the transport bucket 7 to the standby position described above, and the transport bucket that has received the product 13 at this position. The cradle 7a of No. 7 protrudes to the side of the product storage 3 through the bucket inlet / outlet 3b, and the side wall of the cradle closes the bucket inlet / outlet 3b to prevent the cool air from leaking out. Subsequently, when the conveyor 14 installed in the transport bucket 7 is started and the received product is fed backward from the transport bucket 7, the product falls by its own weight and slides down the unloading shooter 8 a facing the lower side to the outer door 2. It is carried out to the provided product outlet 8 and a series of sales operations are completed.

In the structure of the illustrated embodiment, during the selling operation, the transport bucket 7 moves to the inside of the box and the bucket entrance 3b is opened. For this reason, the cool air in the store leaks out of the store through the bucket entrance 3b. However, since the sales operation time is short and the amount of cool air leaked is extremely small, the cool performance in the store is hardly affected. In this respect, if a flapper-type small door that is pushed open by, for example, the transport bucket 7 is provided outside the bucket entrance 3b, it is possible to more reliably prevent cold air leakage during the sales operation.
Also, in the embodiment shown in the drawings, the cold interior is sold and cold products are sold. However, the interior is heated and hot products are sold. The present invention can also be applied to a vending machine that defines and sells both a cold product and a hot product, and the present invention is not limited to the illustrated embodiment.

1 is an external view of a vending machine according to an embodiment of the present invention when the front door is open. Front view of FIG. It is a figure showing the internal structure of FIG. 2, (a), (b) is a longitudinal front view and a longitudinal side view, respectively. FIG. 2 is a detailed structural diagram of an XY transport mechanism and a transport bucket installed in the vending machine of FIG. 1, (a) is a front view, (b) is a side view, and (c) is a plan view of the main part.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Main body cabinet 2 Outer door 3 Commodity storage 3a Thermal insulation wall 3b Bucket entrance 4 Commodity rack 4a Column 5 Transparent insulation glass 6 XY conveyance mechanism 7 Conveyance bucket 8 Commodity exit 8a Unloading shooter 13 Commodity 14 Conveyor

Claims (4)

After defining a product storage box surrounded by a heat insulating wall inside the main body cabinet with an outer door on the front, it was built with a number of columns arranged in the upper and lower rows and the left and right rows inside the product storage box Equipped with a product rack and a transport bucket mounted on the XY transport mechanism on the front side of the product rack, and after receiving a product dispensed from the column by accessing the transport bucket from a standby position to a designated column based on a sales command In the vending machine that returns to the standby position again and carries out the product received in the bucket at this position to the product outlet provided in the outer door,
A vending machine characterized in that an entrance / exit of a transport bucket is opened in the heat insulating side wall of the commodity storage, and the entrance / exit is closed by the transport bucket itself moved to a standby position at the time of sale standby. 2. The vending machine according to claim 1, wherein the conveyor bucket has a U-shaped cradle bottom and is equipped with a conveyor mechanism, and a bucket entrance is opened in the heat insulating side wall of the product storage in accordance with the outer size of the cradle side wall. Vending machine characterized by that. 3. The vending machine according to claim 1 or 2, wherein a product delivery space is defined on the side of the product storage, and the product sent from the transport bucket is placed behind the product outlet provided in the outer door. A vending machine equipped with a product takeout shooter that leads to the takeout exit. 4. The vending machine according to claim 1, wherein the open surface of the product storage is closed with an outer door disposed on the front surface of the cabinet, and the outer door is provided with heat insulating glass as glass for interior perspective. Vending machine characterized by laying.

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