"Candy Arcade" Sound Switch

Do you have one of these standing around and it is used frequently, but the sound is superbly annoying. Then this Instructable will help you a lot. We are going to add a switch to this contraption to make it either mute or play the tone which it emits.  

You will need:

• A candy arcade machine
• A switch (I used a 3 pin one, but it's up for you to decide)
• A drill
• A screwdriver
• A soldering station
• and some solder

You will need to be able to:

• Use common sense around hot or dangerous objects
• How to solder things
• How to drill holes
• Basic electronic skills (How a switch works)

Just for safety we better take the batteries out. Soldering close to batteries can be very dangerous and is not advisable.

Now we take the base off there are several philips head screws which should be accessible with a normal screwdriver.

Now you may look inside of this contraption and you should see several tangled cables of multiple colors and shades. You should be able to identify where the speaker is. Note where the speaker is, we will need this later when we insert the switch.

Now we shall solder away one of the wires connected to the speaker. If you do not want to add a switch and just mute the entire thing this is the best way to leave it (maybe put a cap of electric tape so that it doesn't make a short circuit.)

We will now drill a hole into the coin compartment for the switch. This will make the switch easy to access.
After the hole is in the compartment you can stick in the switch.

Now we have to know how a switch works.
The switch used in this intractable has 3 pins.
The middle pin is constantly connected to either the left or the right pin, this depends which way the switch is pointing.

For our proposes we will leave the left (or the right) pin free. This will cut the circuit to the speaker and not emit a single tone.
So first of all connect the green cable which we took from the speaker and solder it to the right of the switch.
Then grab another piece of wire and solder it to the middle pin. 



            

Now we have to connect the switch to the speaker we do this by taking the black wire and connect it to the speaker (where we solder the other wire off.)

Finally we will now put everything bad together to it's original state. Do this by putting the screws back into the designated holes. Then put the batteries back in.

Now we can try it out so whenever your children (or you) want to play with it you can mute it!

Have fun

Michael Schmid