C.O.C.A. Times

Fixing the Futurity
Most of you are probably familiar with the Mills Fu-
turity slot machine. But in case you 're not, let's first
go over the background on the Futurity. It's the only
cheating slot machine that came from the factory. When
I say that, I'm not counting the 20 symbol/10 stop slot
machines that were standard until the l 930's. The spe-
cial feature is the Futurity returns your 10 coins if you
don't win over 10 consecutive plays. But the machine
has two cams that change the payout odds dramatically
when you play the machine. When the slot is played
for 8 of the 10 cycles, there is a very low payout per-
centage. For the other two cycles, the chance of hitting
two cherries and receiving a payout of 2-4 coins is very
high.
Now don't get me wrong. I love my Mills Futurity slot
machine. I've always enjoyed the 'gimmick' slot ma-
chines, such as the Futurity and the Bonus machines.
They're different, interesting, and fun to play. But I've
had a specific payout problem on the Futurity occurring
on and off for the last 10 years. I've owned the ma-
chine about 20 years, having bought it at Chicagoland.
But the last 10 years, one key function hasn't worked
consistently. That function has been the 10 coin payout
that occurs when you don 't receive any winners over l 0
consecutive machine cycles. This is accompli shed via
a 10 coin payout lever and a bell crank (as it's referred
to in the Mead/Geddes Mill s Pictorial Guide), which
is the stop lever for the 10 coin payout on the mecha-
nism.
I had tried to fix this problem on and off over the years,
using different fixes. That included adding weight on
some of the moving parts, adjusting springs, easing
tension on the upper/lower payout fingers, etc. None
of them worked. While talking with one of my local
coin-op colleagues (master repairman Jeff Lawton),
he determined that the 10 coin payout lever couldn 't
physically make it over the bell crank stop lever on the
mechanism.
To test this, we manually simulated moving the payout
lever higher in relation to the bell crank, and the payout
occurred on the 10th stop of the counter. So that was
the root cause of the problem. There was no factory
part that was going to solve this problem. So I had to
build the part to move the 10 coin payout stop lever
higher in relation to the bell crank. I had various metal
parts around my workshop to fabricate the necessary
part. I had hoped to create one part, but as the project
proceeded, I ended up making two parts, and linking
them together.
You can see them in photo #5. It took some trial and
error, but I fin ally got the bell crank elevated for the
machine cycle.
Photo 5
The 10 coin payout lever has to get past this bell crank
to payout the coins. The bell crank doesn' t move out of
the way until 10 plays without a payout have occurred.
See photo #4 for these two key parts.
Photo 4
Even after I finished installing the two linked parts, it
still didn't make the 10 coin payout. The fix for that
was to reattach a second spring on the 10 coin payout
lever, which provided additional tension. Then it fi-
nally worked and made the payout! I had achieved suc-
cess at last. My journey had ended with a successful
and interesting conclusion.
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