AP 4000 Not Accepting Dollar Bills

[andyinchville]

HI All,

I have an AP 4000 snack machine that has stopped accepting bills (won't even try to pull them in or make any noise EXCEPT when you turn the machine off then on and then it will make the "cycling" noise (as though it were stacking bills).

I bought another bill validator for it but that did not fix the problem so I exchanged that validator for yet another one, and it still did not work.

A vending friend of mine suggested I try looking at the coin mech because he said sometimes a coin mech will "go bad" and cause the bill validator not to work.

I looked at the coin mech and it was nearly full (to be safe I even manually topped it off but it was working fine w/ coins even before I did that)...The machine works perfectly with coins (both registering the different coins and issuing the proper change is needed) but just does take in dollars.

As a side note, I went to service the machine the other day and for kicks I decided to test vend the machine before opening it....As usual it worked fine w/ coins but not bills (no sound at all).

When I did open the machine, I decided to try the old on / off trick and as usual it did make the "normal start up noises" BUT this time it would take a dollar! (BUT only 1 dollar each time you turn the machine off then on again).

I did note this time when I turned the machine off then on that one of the LEDs on the control board started flickering at a very rapid pace (the left lid did the flickering).....After taking in the first dollar, the both LEDs went back to solid (non flickering or flashing) and the machine stops taking bills.

FWIW , when I first got the machine a year or so ago I did have to buy a control board for it.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Andrew

[Technivend]

An AP4000 did not come from the factory bill acceptor capable. You must have a kit in the machine to make it interface with the machine. I would suggest trying to swpa out the coin mech first and see if that helps but I would bet on the kit that you are having problems with. Without knowing which kit I am only shooting from the hip though. So if you can let us know what that is will help us help you.