The ultimate device for beer-swilling couch potatoes, this machine dispenses beers as fast as anyone can drink. Just put your glass in the holder, press the Go Button and watch the machine simultaneously tilt the glass, lift the bottle, gently pour a beer leaving room for the head, and gradually ease back to vertical.
Repeat for 4 beers, and then the machine automatically returns the empty bottle to the turntable, which indexes around to line up the next bottle, already opened during the pouring of the last beer.
A brass rod probe checks the for next bottle cap. If the bottle is empty the “Another Bottle Please” warning sign is triggered, so that the 6 bottle turntable magazine can be replenished. Continuity of the beer supply is therefore maintained.
Full of mechanical porn, the machine contains a full range of machine elements: levers, cams, universal joints, dog clutches, latches, bevel gears, epicyclic gearing, chain drive, Geneva mechanism, Oldham couplings.
The opener lever has a floating pivot post which maximizes prying action with minimal torque reaction. Engineers will appreciate that the weight of the cantilevered bottle provides regenerative torque, thus avoiding overload of the motor and gearbox.
All non-standard parts were made by hand tools only – hacksaw, files, electric hand drill. The primary gear reduction is an epicyclic gear train with an internal ring gear made as a bronze investment casting from a wax impression generated by rotating a pinion on an eccentric shaft. Power plant is a 12 Volt windscreen wiper motor circa1961.
At party to celebrate its completion in 1972, it opened 72 bottles and poured 288 beers with barely a hitch.
