Here’s some teardown photos of an old De La Rue coin counter, used in businesses for rapid counting of change into large bags.
An overview of the whole mechanical system of the counter. Coins are loaded into the drum at the rear of the machine, which sorts them into a row for the rubber belt to pick up & run through the counter. The coin type to be sorted is selected by turning the control knobs on the right.
The control knobs adjust the width & height of the coin channel so only the correct sized coins will be counted.
The counter is driven by a basic AC induction motor, the motor power relay & reversing relay is on this PCB, along with the 5v switching supply for the main CPU board.
The SMPS on this board looks like a standard mains unit, but it’s got one big difference. Under the frame next to the main motor is a relatively large transformer, with a 35v output. This AC is fed into the SMPS section of the PSU board to be converted to 5v DC for the logic.
I’m not sure why it’s been done this way, and have never seen anything similar before.
The edge of the coin channel can be seen here, the black star wheel rotates when a coin passes & registers the count.
Here’s the main controller PCB, IC date codes put the unit to about 1995. The main CPU is a NEC UPD8049HC 8-bit micro, no flash or EEPROM on this old CPU, simply mask ROM. Coin readout is done on the 4 7-segment LED displays. Not much to this counter, it’s both electronically & mechanically simple.
Coin counting is done by the star wheel mentioned above, which drives the interrupter disc on this photo-gate. The solenoid locks the counter shaft to prevent over or under counting when a set number of coins is to be counted.
Under the frame, here on the left is the small induction motor, only 6W, 4-pole. The run cap for the motor is in the centre, and the 35v transformer is just visible behind it.
Main drive to the coin sorting mech is through rubber belts, and bevel gears drive the coin drum.
