Hello everyone! I want to build a crane machine for a project and I don’t know where to start. (You know the one with Stuffed Animals.!)

Do you have any idea how the mechanism of a crane machine works? If you have some links where I can buy parts to build one or understand the mechanism just let me know. I dont need the claw, juste the up and down and the basic left, right, up and down should be enough.

I’ve check to buy a used one but I can’t find any in my area and the shipping is too high for the entire cabinet.

Thanks

 

I think it would be very easy with just any joystick and a micro to interface the joystick with the motor and operate the state machine. Then you can come up with some simple mechanical systems to operate the claw. Although ball screws are ideal for this type of thing, they are very expensive. I would just use a motor and a steel cable w/ pulleys to move the carriage around.

 

This project was recently shown on the History channel (or similar). They built a giant version of this old arcade favorite.
The wiring shown on screen was Very Complicated!.
The positioning wiring is straight forward - The timing of the functions is fairly complex.
Generally you are allowed one shot in each of the X / Y directions. That is, as soon as you let go of the joystick, the direction you were heading is "locked out" and the logic awaits for the next (and final) directional input. When that input is received and the joystick signal is dropped the "CLAW DROP" command starts. This is a simple motor run useing limit switches. Of course ther is a "homing" sequence that runs the claw to the discharge hopper.

 

I saw that same thing and thought to myself that it looked overly complicated. If think it would be possible with a micro, driver circuit, handful of limit switches and a couple of motors. That one they built was something like 7m tall.