Vending Machines - The Inside Story
In fact not much has changed in the way hot drinks machines work over the years. Recently micro electronics have improved the reliability and design of the equipment but they remain very similar to the first coffee vending machines invented more than 50 years ago.
After making your drink selection by pressing a button or keying in a number, the first thing to happen is that a valve opens and allows a cupful of cold mains water in to the machine via a filter (often a combined filter and water softener). This water goes into a heated storage tank and displaces a cupful of near boiling water along a feed pipe to a mixing system where the selected ingredient is added and then on into a disposable cup which has dropped into the serving position from a stack of cups in a large hopper.
It is the quality of the ingredients arriving at the mixing system - including the water itself - that determines the quality of the finished beverage. In the early days the water would not be filtered and if the machine had not been operated for many hours (e.g. overnight) the water would have an unpleasant 'taint' due to it having been standing in the heated tank for a long period. Water for tea or coffee making is at its best when it is fresh and the impurities taken out. Modern vending machines have very small water storage heaters so that the turnover of fresh water is much quicker, and some machines even dispense off some water if the machine has not been used for a long time.
Originally the dry ingredients (coffee, tea, chocolate etc.) would all be a soluble instant type so that the mixing system was quite simple. Perhaps a glass bowl into which the dry ingredient and water would flow, together with dried milk and sugar if required. Clearly having dry ingredients in close proximity to hot steam is likely to cause problems. Despite powerful extraction fans to keep the steam away from the dry ingredients, clogging was one of the main reasons for early machine faults, and the cause of poor drink quality problems.
Ingredients clogging in modern equipment is now a thing of the past as more efficient methods of steam extraction are employed and mixing methods improved. Also nowadays - although powdered milk is still used in preference to liquid milk (for hygienic reasons) - most machines can produce a freshly brewed cup of tea or coffee. Both the fresh tea and coffee in the machine ingredient bins are ground for a much quicker infusion time. In the complex ingredient and water mixing system, the water is forced through the tea or coffee with the grounds being retained by a filter or moving belt of filter paper, to be then tipped or fed into a separate receptacle for later disposal.
The computer in the modern machine will allow a vast variation and combination of the ingredients dispensed offering a huge choice of drinks to the user and, whilst coins can still be used to start the operation and deliver your drink, machines now also operate using tokens and credit cards.
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