Polyvend not accepting bills

[rjh914]

Good morning:

I run an old Polyvend/Lektrovend (model LVE9) cold food machine at one of my accounts.  It uses an MEI 24V model VN2502 U3 validator and a Coinco 9300 series coin mech.  

The validator suddenly started rejecting all bills.  I did a "quick clean" of the sensors on site, but it did not help.  I swapped out the validator - bills are still rejected.  Next, I swapped out the coin mech with a rebuilt unit from Vendors Exchange - it did not help.

Any idea what could be going on here?

Thank you,

Bob

Hill Vending

[Vendo Mike]

Pulling the bill in a rejecting?  When it rejects, does the machine give a message or flash "exact change"?  VN series DBV's should give a flash code after rejecting a bill.  Those are listed on the bill box.

[rjh914]

Yes, it pulls the bills in and rejects them all.  No messages or "exact change" flashes.  The red LED on the validator is on (no error codes).

[Vendo Mike]

It sounds as if the DBV just doesn't like the bill(s).  Verify the orientation of the bill against your DBV settings.  "1-way acceptance" = Face up, black seal first.

You might check your DBV in another machine to verify that it can accept bills.  Pretty common to VN/AE series DBV's is if there is a hair or crack on the cross channel sensors found on the lower track, the DBV believes it's being "strung" and will not accept. More commonly, slick belts and / or dirty sensors effect acceptance.

[rjh914]

Thank you for the responses.  Bump for some fresh ideas...I am stumped!

I thoroughly cleaned a validator and installed it - same problem.  So I installed that validator on another machine and found it to work just fine.  

 

[Vendo Mike]

If it's working on another machine, you'll want to verify coin level or a faulty harness.  Try vending several times using coins of all denominations.  Once you have a couple inches of coins in the tubes that the board was able to see going in, it may start to accept. Otherwise, you're likely needing a harness or board.  

[AngryChris]

If this is a good location, you should really replace the machine.  If it's not that good, you should just have snack and soda and no food.  I'm afraid you'll dump money into this machine.  All I can think of, to pull in a s reject bills, is a bad harness or board.  If it doesn't even try to pull the bills in at all, then the machine may believe it's low on coins meaning you need to do a tube fill.