Patent ID: 7289880

Claim:
A vending machine comprising: a cabinet frame including top, bottom, side and rear walls that collectively define a central cavity; a plurality of column walls defining a plurality of stack areas for storing columns of product containers to be vended; a door mounted to the cabinet frame for selectively closing the central cavity; a plurality of dispensing units, each of the plurality of dispensing units being adapted to receive product containers from an associated one of the plurality of stack areas; a plurality of vend motors connected to the plurality of dispensing unit, each of the plurality of vend motors including a rotatable output for selectively operating a respective one of the dispensing units to dispense the product containers; and an electronic control unit adapted to control rotation of the output of each of the plurality of vend motors through a desired vend angle, with the desired vend angle being established based on the product container to be dispensed, said electronic control unit including a memory having stored therein various predetermined vend angles corresponding to known product containers while being programmable to retain supplementary vend angles for additional product containers, wherein the electronic control unit can selectively operate in a set package mode where the desired vend angle for a select one of the plurality of vend motors can be changed.