GB908999A - Improvements in machines for sorting and counting coins or similar articles - Google Patents

Abstract

908,999. Separating coins. INTERNATIONAL COIN COUNTING MACHINE CO. Ltd. Aug. 16, 1961 [Aug. 16, 1960], No. 28435/60. Class 27. [Also in Group XIX] A coin-counting machine comprises means to sort the coins according to size, means for determining both individual totals of each type of coin and a running total of all the coins and means for stopping the machine when a predetermined total of any one type of coin is reached. The coins are sorted by a rotating plate of two layers 1, 2, turning on a fixed plate of two layers 3, 4, and, after falling through holes 5 of a size to admit the largest coin without allowing two of the smallest coins to be side by side, fall into traps 6 arranged in increasing order of coin size. Each coin in its corresponding trap tilts and is forced past a star-wheel 8 by a projection 7 on the layer 2 until it falls into a container through a hole 9. For each starwheel, a chain drive transmits the step-by-step movements to a counting unit totalling the number of coins of a given denomination and to a sprocket 13. Each sprocket 13 drives a camplate 26 within a housing 24 and a second plate 25 on a cross-shaft 22 concentrically rotatable within the housing carries a pawl 27 engageable by the cam-plate so that, when a coin causes rotation of a sprocket 13, the camplate releases the pawl from one of several teeth on the housing and allows the shaft 22 to be rotated until the pawl meets the next tooth. Power for this rotation is supplied by a monitor shaft 4 having a slipping clutch driven by a motor 18 and a chain drive to a sprocket 21. The chain also drives, through slipping clutches, a pair of shafts 40, 42, connected to the cross-shafts 22 through a differential mechanism. The shaft 40, by means of gearing between the cross-shaft and the differential train to compensate for the varying value of coins, totals the value of the coins and the shaft 42 totals their number. As the slipping clutch tends to drive the differential train and cross-shafts much faster than the star-wheel allows, the simultaneous operation of several star-wheels will be added by the differential train. Each cross-shaft 22 has an eccentrically-driven pawl which advances a ratchet-wheel step-by-step and after a predetermined rotation of the wheel a cam-disc opens a switch to stop the motor and apply a brake.