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Any pictures that you can provide of cabinets with a ruler or tape measure on them for scale will help immensely.

I'm in the process of making a proper trip blade as mine didn't have the original.

Pictures that Jim Roller sent me years ago:





My recreation:

I'm watching your progress with interest but sorry I can't contribute. Erie Digger's are rare in the UK. I think I saw one cabinet and one mechanism over the years. Maybe Ddstoys will come to the rescue. Anyway - good luck!

Sorry mate, I went out to get you the photos but they're buried on a shelf well above my head and I’ll need a second pair of hands to help. I’ll try get them down on my next days off.

No worries. When you get there, you get there. I've got plenty of things to occupy me in the meantime. I'm trying to teach myself to use AutoDesk Inventor to model some of these mechanisms.

Side note: I got a response from my email the other day to Jim Roller:

I wish I could help you but, sadly, I have little to offer. I sold out everything I had pertaining to the mechanical diggers a few years ago and the buyer has died and I have no further way to know what happened to the materials including about 60 digger mechanisms.

It's really quite a shame, but I was really glad to see that Jim's still kicking. He also gave me the name of someone that may have a copy of the cabinet plans.

Mine looks to have a completely different setup than yours. Let me know if I can do any more.

Wow, it looks like there are many variations in trip mechanisms on these diggers. I've seen about 6 of them now. I'm going to have to figure out what will work with my setup. Mine is similar to what I posted above.

Thanks for the cabinet plans DD. They're pretty rough with a few errors in there. I'm going to model them up with some changes made and then I'll send you a set back. (in metric )

I’m not very smart but I can lift heavy things.

Heavy things always need to be lifted. No one can ever decide where they should be placed the first time, resulting in moving them around 3 or 4 times. That means we'll always need people to lift heavy things.

I'm hoping that I can fully document how one of these digger mechanisms works so that anyone can always get one up and running again, even if they need to fabricate a few pieces. Once I get this complete, there should be a good record here, with details of each part. I haven't done much 3D CAD in several years, but so far this is turning out pretty good.

Looking good so far. I can’t begin to understand how these computer drawings are done.

My older digger mech is different again. I might drag it down and post some photos of that if you like for reference.

I'll take as many pictures as I can get.

I've got the cabinet well under way. I need to get the digger calibrated, so I can determine the height of the prize tray and then build the chute.
I was surprised that there were no real details in the plans for the chute or tray. Other than the basic dimensions, I ended up not following the plans at all. Too many math errors. Once I complete my cabinet I'll upload a set of plans here for everyone.

Looking good mate. Damn, I wish I had your motivation and skills.

I'd gladly build anything for people, but everyone lives on the wrong side of the ocean

It would be about 100 GBP to ship over.

Getting closer. But I still have to figure out the coin mechanism.

It’s looking great. I planned on using the mechanical slide mechs on mine but how to activate the trip rods on each machine will be different and tricky.

Someone suggested to use a slide mech and a chain / pulley type set up.

I've got a 25 cent slide mech that I'll be using. But I still have to figure out the linkage. That's really the only outstanding item. Everything else is working perfectly.

I noticed a lot of friction when turning the handle counter clockwise. This uses the reversing gears right by the handle. Upon further inspection, the gears are extremely worn and I think they've been trimmed and shimmed, quite badly even. I was able to hunt down new old stock of the gears on ebay and should have them today or tomorrow. I'll have to replace a one way needle bearing in one of the gears which will require some machining, but based on the original specs of the gears, they'll fit in, near perfectly.

They're Boston G464Y gears:
https://www.bostongear.com/-/media/File ... gears.ashx

Some nicely aligned fresh new gears. Not perfect, but without making a new cage, they'll never be perfectly aligned. This one has a slight bend to it. I'll put it on the list of things to do if I get bored.

Finally done.


The kids have been playing it non stop. Of course they're using my quarters and not their own. I may carve a Marquee for it and add in some lights. It gets quite dark in there. Is it okay to have an attractive mode on a machine from the '60s?