Reproduction of Bell Fruit Manufacturing Co Ltd Cascade Penny Slot Machine

This is a reproduction of the Cascade Penny Slot machine. This was one of my favourite vintage arcade games and has been a pleasure building it.

18mm plywood for playfield

Laminated Glass

Various wood for building case\housing & for coin mech.

1mm thick sheet metal for pieces inside of machine.

10mm x 2mm Multi-Purpose Flat Bar - Drawn Steel 1m

20mm x 3mm Multi-Purpose Flat Bar - 1m

1 pair of jackpot levers - spares on ebay

5 pair of arms and levers - spares on ebay

Varnish, undercoat, paints

This was the best photo I could find of a Cascade machine. I enlarged it so the penny were the right size, then printed it using Excel. This resulted in 12 pages that I taped together and then used to mark out centres for bars then the 4mm bars themselves. I then marked out and routed where the holes and grooves would be needed. A channel was routed out on the back of the playfield to allow coins to pass in behind.

The bars for the playfield needed to be 2mm thick to allow for a British penny to have enough room to move. The width of the bars needed to be 4mm but I could not find these at any DIY outlets. I made 4mm bars from stainless steel 10mm bars that I found in local DIY shop. The 10mm bars were sandwiched between clamped pieces of plywood and cut down the middle with fine jigsaw. These were then filed to clean them up.

The 4mm bars were small enough to be able to bent into shape using clamps and bending round paint tins to get an even curve.

The bars were all cut to size to match the original photo and with spaces where required for the pennies to be held. I found jackpot levers (right hand side) and arms & levers (five needed for playfield) on sale on ebay so I did not manufacture these. The bars were drilled and fixed to plywood using 5mm screws.

For the trail runs I clamped perspex over the playfield to test that that things worked as expected. There were small tweaks needed for the arms and levers (moving ever so slightly by 0.5mm to 1mm) to get these hold coins and releasing when they should.

Everything was stripped down and cleaned. All paint was done with tins of spray paint to have clean even surfaces, including undercoat. Playfield was painted matt red. 4mm bars were painted with chrome effect paint.

Bars were then assembled back onto the playfield.

1mm thick metal sheets were cut and fitted to the rear of the playfield for where the coins pass in behind.

I did not have any photos or diagrams of the striker so this was built to allow coin to come from playfield above, drop down into striker area, ready to be launched out the groove towards the playfield. This is best shown on the first photo.

The pieces were bolted together. The striker had wooden handle fitted.

The outside of the case has a metal strip with a slot just large enough to allow a penny to come through. This stops larger coins from been used. The slot is at angle. When the coin enters the machine it first slide\rolls across a hole that is just wide enough for the penny to not fall into the hole. This traps any smaller coins entered that diverts them into the return area at the bottom.

Coins of the correct size continue to the shaped deflector that takes the coin out over towards the top of the striker.

The rear of the coin mech had wedge shape removed to allow it to fit tight into the corner.

The first photo shows 20mm metal bars that were used to clamp the playfield to the frame. This was copied from photos of an original machine. This photo shows return tube that runs down machine for rejected (smaller) coins. It shows the winning area at the bottom where winning coins come down through into the back and get diverted into the return area at the bottom. A plastic connector block was fitted to make it easier to lift the playfield when required. The coins that are returned to the inside of the machine have a metal length that is long enough to allow coins to pass over and fall into the coin box.

The third photo shows the coin box that holds the coins that are banked for the operator. This has a hole (top left) to empty box and an magnetic catch to keep box in position in rear half of the machine.

Finally, a lock was fitted.