So, during lockdown I bought an old, broken claw machine (grabber) for £35.

The original plan was to use it as a display unit or for storage. I did not think it would be possible to fix it.

I was wrong.

It powered on, which was a good start, but none of the wires were connected. That did not take long to sort, and soon the crane was responding to the controls. After that, I had to rebuild the crane itself.

The claw turned out to be from a completely different machine and did not fit properly. Nothing a bit of electrical tape could not fix in the short term.

Then came the main problem. A cog had snapped. I am not sure how this happened. Maybe the previous owners forced it or maybe it simply failed.

I found the manual and tracked down the part reference, but the only places selling it looked unreliable and the price was far too high.

So I did what seemed reasonable at the time and guessed.

I estimated the size, designed a replacement, and 3D printed it. The first attempt was close. The second attempt worked.

At that point, the machine was fully functional from an electronics point of view. It was still missing some covers, and the claw did not work well because it was the wrong size, so I designed and printed parts to fix those issues as well.

Some of the original stickers were missing, so I created my own banner and side panels and rebranded it:

“Covid Claw: Pandemic Purchase.”

I also resprayed the metal parts. It used to be an unpleasant pink and is now red.

It has now been five years and it is still fully working.

It still has the original “Candy Man” sound chip. Over the years I have tried to replace it with limited success, but I have a new plan and will update if it works, or if it does not.