My Whiz Kid Gumball machine doesn't always drop the gumballs. Sometimes its one out of five, sometimes three out of twenty not dropping?

[librarytammy]

[gumball guy]

14 hours ago, librarytammy said:

First, for future reference, this should be posted to the "bulk vending" sub forum. Now on to your problem.... it sounds like your gumball wheel may be timed wrong resulting in misvends. When you put a quarter in the machine and turn the coin mechanism to completion, one of the gumball wheel holes should be directly over the drop chute. You will need to take the gumballs out to check. There is an outside chance it could be something else but I think the wheel timing is the most probably culprit.

[librarytammy]

Thank you so much, I'm new and this is my first post, I thought I posted it to bulk vending. I also neglected to mention that I have taken the top off and tried to align it three times. I am a middle school librarian and working on the machine is not my forte but I'm trying. It's frustrating when my students buy a gumball and it doesn't drop. Please let me know if you think of anything else it could be.

[gumball guy]

8 hours ago, librarytammy said:

Thank you so much, I'm new and this is my first post, I thought I posted it to bulk vending. I also neglected to mention that I have taken the top off and tried to align it three times. I am a middle school librarian and working on the machine is not my forte but I'm trying. It's frustrating when my students buy a gumball and it doesn't drop. Please let me know if you think of anything else it could be.

Well first and foremost you need to make sure the wheel is timed/aligned correctly. Can you take a picture of it and post it here? Next, I am assuming that you are using 1 inch gumballs and if not, that can cause issues. Moving forward, when using bigger globes like that one you need something called a baffle and/or a spring agitator:

The spring agitator alone often looks like this:

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These parts help to keep the gumballs from jamming up around the wheel due to the sheer weight of the gumballs bearing down on the wheel itself. It diffuses and stirs them up. Without it you can have a problem called "bridging" where the gum balls jam up and do not fall down into the hole sometimes thus causing misvends.

If you can get a few pictures looking down at the gumball wheel (with the machine empty of course) would really help us assess the situation. 

[librarytammy]

Thanks, I was told by the distributor to align the springs across from each other. I did this but it still doesn't want to drop one out ten gumballs.

[gumball guy]

3 hours ago, librarytammy said:

Thanks, I was told by the distributor to align the springs across from each other. I did this but it still doesn't want to drop one out ten gumballs.

It looks like it is slightly out of alignment and I think that is probably the problem. Below is a a picture of a correctly "timed" wheel. At the end of each vending cycle, one of the 3 holes should be positioned "directly" over the chute. If the the the gumball wheel hole is even slightly off it can result in a failed vend. Also, that gumball wheel is adjustable so make sure that there is enough clearance on each hole to accommodate 1.1 inches. Each 1 inch gumball varies slightly but none should be larger than 1.1 inch. If the adjustment plate is a not open enough sometimes odd shaped gumballs can catch and misvend. 

You should be able to look directly through the gumball wheel hole into the chute. This is where the gumball wheel should start the vending cycle and end the vending cycle. Let me know if this helps.