Loading your first products
Most first-week jams are loading mistakes rather than machine faults. Getting this right is worth more than any setting.
Match the product to the coil
Coil pitch — the spacing between the turns of the spring — determines what will vend reliably from that lane. Too wide and the product tips and hangs; too narrow and it jams against its neighbor.
- One product per turn. If two items sit in one turn of the coil, you will get double-drops and short-counts.
- The product should sit upright and roughly centerd, touching neither side wall hard.
- There should be a small gap between the front of the product and the glass. If it presses the glass, the coil will fight it.
Products that vend well
Rigid, roughly rectangular items in sturdy packaging are the easy case: boxed snacks, cans, bottles with a defined shoulder, sealed cartons, boxed trading cards.
Products that cause trouble
- Bagged crisps and anything pillowy — they inflate, catch and hang on the coil.
- Anything soft enough to deform under its own weight in a warm cabinet.
- Very light items, which do not have enough weight to fall cleanly.
- Tall narrow items with a high center of gravity, which tip forward and wedge.
- Anything you have not personally test-vended at least three times before committing a full lane to it.
Loading a coil
- Rotate the coil so the open end of the spring is pointing down at roughly the six o'clock position. This is the position it should always be left in.
- Load from the back forward, one item per turn, all facing the same way.
- Do not force the last item in at the front. If it does not fit without pressure, that lane holds one fewer than you think it does.
- Once loaded, look along the lane from the side. Everything should stand at the same angle. Anything leaning is a future jam.
Set your counts honestly
Tell the platform exactly how many you loaded, not how many the lane theoretically holds. Inventory that drifts from reality on day one only gets worse, and it is the main reason operators stop trusting their own restocking reports.
Leave some room to learn
Resist filling every lane with a different product on day one. Start with a narrower range of things you are confident vend cleanly, see what actually sells at that location over two or three weeks, and expand from there. An empty lane earns nothing, but a jammed lane costs you a service call.