I recently ended up with a countertop Deltronic DL-9000 ticket eater from an arcade auction a little while ago. Since it’s a more unique piece of arcade equipment, I felt a teardown post was in order; to show just exactly what’s inside, how it works, and what happens to your tickets once you’ve fed them into the ticket eater at your local arcade.

These machines were designed for smaller redemption arcades and family entertainment centres as a smaller alternative to the full-size standup ticket eaters also made by Deltronic Labs.

Tickets are fed in through the slot here on the front. The LED display plugs into the back of the unit using that grey serial cable.

The power supply is the shielded metal box at the top of the inside view photo. The electronic counter at the bottom right is battery powered and displays the number of tickets taken in over the lifetime of the machine. Interestingly, the reset button is disabled.

The ticket eater uses an IR element to detect the insertion of a ticket, and counts the notches at the edge in between each ticket to determine how many have been inserted. Tickets are then shredded with a single continuous cut along the centre of each ticket. Since this is a countertop model, shredded tickets are released through a cutout in the bottom for collection in either a garbage bin or the optional shredded ticket box (not shown, but advertised on Deltronic Labs website).

Overall, a simple, but well-designed piece of equipment. Now you’ll know what happens to your tickets next time you’re at your local arcade.