Vendo VUE 30/40 confusion

[crossi]

Hi from Germany to you all. I guess you are the only community that could help us. We bought three Vendo Vue 30/40 for - let´s say nearly nothing - at german ebay, they must have been in use by the US army in belgium and one in germany i guess, but I am not too sure. We like the look of the machines and to be honest, we haven´t seen these machines anywhere else in Germany. The technique is quite fascinating, so we are now building them up again to be used in our vending business. 

Here is the confusion: all three machines seem to have trouble with the y-motor, though I succeeded in making one work for at least five minutes or so 😄 the hands don´t work in "test section" of the menu, but I guess this goes along with the y-motor problems. 

so I checked everything, all motors are technically running, all cables are fine, I can see nothing, that could be broken or so. I tried all combinations of the y-motors sections and hands of the three machines, but no one does work properly. BUT: the x-motor works *lol

so I was wondering if the pdc board could be broken. i would try and find some replacement if that is worth the effort, but what if the problem is somewhere else, probably in my brains, as I might not understand the issue of the machines. any help would be welcome. thank you guys. 

[crossi]

UPDATE: the y-motor seems to work, but when you start the machine, the y-motor just moves a bit up and down, three or four times, but actually stays in the home position. i can also hear a weird alarm sound coming from the motor. the display says "y-motor jam". 

i´m wondering if the motor doesn´t know where his home is. the sensor on the left side seems to work and is slightly overlapping to the magnet, as shown in the manual. 

[crossi]

UPDATE part 2:

i found the perfect combination of y-motor assy and hand, now nearly everything is moving fluently up, down, left and right. it even does a full vending circle, but the z and the clamp motors don´t work. jesus... 

sorry for giving you the full story, my hair is turning grey 😄

 

[Vendo Mike]

At least you still have hair, Vues made mine fall out. 

You should be forewarned that parts for that equipment have gotten harder to find and considerably more expensive than even 1 or 2 years ago.  As a line of equipment, Vue was discontinued prior to 2014 in favor of the new design (GF9). 

You should be able to test each motor in test mode. If the "z" motor does not want to cycle, you'll need to make sure the mechanism is in time by counting the holes in the track and making sure the toothed rollers are in the same position on each side. If that looks good, apply power to the z motor to see if it functions. If yes, check the harness to the pdc and then finally, the pdc is the only thing left in the circuit. 

Also, check that the rail is grounded to the door. There should be a couple of grounding straps tying the igus cable (harness in the plastic chain) to the rail either on the top center cross member or on the left end.  There should be another tying the harness to the door near the vmc.   Without that, the machine will have a "floating ground" and act crazy.   

Be careful about swapping hands and controllers. The firmware has to be compatible in order to communicate and operate properly. Also, in early machines, there was a sensor for Y home position which was programmed out of later firmware.  This could account for the 'y home' issue you were experiencing earlier. 

Once functional, you'll also want to calibrate the vending mechanism. Under Calibration - Discovery - Level 2. This will send the vend mechanism to around the entire machine in a crossing pattern so find all of the trays.  The FLO (forward looking optic) should be shining at the center of the reflectors on each tray.  When the hand is at "home", it should shine on the bottom right tray almost like a sunset (only the upper half of the circle of light on the reflector).  If it's out of alignment left to right, add/remove shims behind the "x home" sensor to move the home position left/right.  You can adjust the "L" brackets that the rail rests on to adjust "y home" position. This generally happens when the door starts to sag.

[crossi]

THANK YOU SO MUCH MIKE!!!!!!!!!! The hint of grounding straps was perfect, I didn´t know that. so I checked and renewed everything that had to do with grounding and all of a sudden the clamp motor was running. then I changed the z-motor and now the machine works perfectly. i also calibrated like you told me. it sells perfectly. I´m really happy. 

@Vendo Mike send me a PM please, cause I would like to send you some bottles of a very tasteful southern german beer for your fast help. thank you a thousand times 

[Vendo Mike]

I appreciate the offer but I laid off the sauce a while back. I found that I say and do a lot fewer dumb things when I don't drink

 I'm glad you were able to get the machine running. I'm here if you need help in the future. 

[AZVendor]

Good job, Mike.  You are probably one of only a few that has a clue about those machines.

[Vendo Mike]

Thanks AZ.  I've had my hands in a few and shouted some "tv mature words".