UK-based maker and MAKE subscriber Jonathan Jamieson was fascinated by coin pusher arcade games, but put off making his own until seeing a design on Instructables. Spurred into action, he started building. After combining some MDF, perspex, and a surplus servo using a hand-made template, he had constructed his very own penny pusher arcade game. Looks great!
10 thoughts on “DIY penny pusher taunts you into giving up your coin”
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I’ve never figured out how the operators make money on these things. Do they shave a few penny’s off before they open in the morning? If so, who would be sucker enough to put a penny into one that obviously wasn’t full?
If you’ve ever played one and thought that more coins fell than you got back then that’s because the machine kept some! Coins that drop off at the sides are kept as profit. I’d like to tell you the % but I don’t know, there isn’t that much info I can find on real ones.
My version has about £5 worth of coins in so a full size machine is going to be holding a lot of cash, especially if it’s a 10p version!
I used to work with these machines, at either side of the ‘bed’ with the coins on is a hole which leads down to the machine’s cashbox. At the front of the bed is an adjustable lip, as the coins get pushed forward they encounter this lip and start bunching up, coins from behind meeting this mass get pushed sideways causing some to drop down the holes at the side of the bed.
The machines profit percentage is adjusted by adjusting the size of the side holes (via sliding plates that make the holes bigger or smaller) and by moving the lip up or down.
At the place where I used to work we would empty the machines every few days and would generally take >£100 out from the cashboxes under the machine(but it was very busy).
thanks for posting that information. Do you mind if I quote you for my website?
Yes, no problem you can use the info on your website, if you’d like a more complete description/diagrams (although my drawing skills are pretty poor) let me know.