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- [Jared] This is a bowling pinsetter machine.
There's one at the end of every bowling lane,
but you normally don't get to see it.
In this video, we'll use a little 3D magic
to help us understand how this works.
My name's Jared, I create 3D animations
to show and explain how things work.
This video is sponsored by KiwiCo.
Most commonly, the game played is called 10-pin bowling.
It's common here in the United States
and in other areas of the world,
but there's different variations of bowling
that you might not know about.
Nine-pin bowling,
duckpin bowling,
candlepin bowling,
and five-pin bowling.
The rules vary slightly between the different games,
but for this video, we're talking about 10-pin bowling.
In the early 1900s, there wasn't a machine back here
to set up the pins.
They would hire people to stand back here
and reset the pins by hand
and then return your bowling ball.
But now, there's a better way, we have a pinsetter machine
to do it automatically.
Older pinsetter machines might look a little bit different
than what you see here.
This one's called a Brunswick GS-X pinsetter.
It's been around for about 20 years now,
and it's the pinsetter of choice
for the world's most competitive bowling events.
Let me start off by showing you a sped-up version
of what happens to the pins.
Down to the ball pit,
then the pin elevator,
onto the distributor,
then the setting table,
and then back onto the pin deck.
Now, that's a quick overview,
now, let's go through these parts in detail.
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Behind the pins is the ball cushion assembly.
This absorbs the impact of the bowling ball.
Pins knocked over are sometimes referred to as deadwood.
The remaining pins will be lifted up
and the deadwood will be cleared off the lane.
The pins get knocked down into the ball pit.
At the bottom is the transport band.
It's a conveyor belt that moves everything towards the back,
however, the bowling ball can't fit through,
the gap isn't big enough.
Because the transport band is angled slightly,
the ball will find its way to a tiny door on the side.
The door will wait three to four seconds before opening
just to make sure that all the pins have moved past it.
We don't want any bowling pins to get stuck in here.
This is called the ball accelerator.
It's shared by two lanes.
Inside, there's a large, green, flat belt.
This is what pushes the ball, giving it a speed boost.
At the front of the bowling lane is the ball return rack.
Inside is the ball lift, it has an S-shaped curve
with two ball lift tires.
The bowling ball is moved under the ground,
up the ball lift, and onto the ball return rack.
So what happens to our pins now?
At the back of the machine is the pin elevator.
It has 14 pin shovels.
These are continuously moving around
to lift the bowling pins.
On each side of the bottom, there are pin feed deflectors.
These guide the pins towards the bottom of the elevator.
When the bowling pin gets a spot, it starts to rise.
The pin deflectors push it towards the middle
and the pin-centering wedges
make sure they are right in the center,
ready for the next part.
At the top of the elevator, we have the shovel guide.
There's a guide roller right here on each shovel.
It follows the edge of the shovel guide.
This tilts the shovel so that the bowling pin rolls off.
As it rolls off, it will hit the pin count switch.
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This tells the next part of the machine
that another pin is coming.
This whole top part here is called the distributor.
This moves our bowling pins to the right places quickly
and efficiently.
Here's the shark assembly, four feed lanes,
two crossover lanes, 10 pin stations,
and two overflow chutes.
You got all that?
Yeah, me neither.
Okay, let's break this down.
Right after the pin elevator,
the pin goes to the shark assembly.
It gets the name because of the shark fin right here.
This is how the machine sorts the pins
between the left and right feed lanes.
The pins are moved by conveyor belts
made up of two green round belts.
You'll notice on the elevator
that the pins can be facing either way.
The turn wedges then rotate the pin
so it's always bottom-side first.
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If the pin goes to the left,
it will travel through these lanes.
If it goes to the right,
it will travel through these lanes.
On the sides of the lanes, we have the pin stations,
there are 10 of them to match the 10 pins
that will soon be put on the bowling lane.
The left lanes have six spots
and the right lanes have four spots,
this is why the shark fin guides more pins to the left.
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If all the spots in the lane are filled,
then a pin will make its way to the overflow chutes.
It will go down to the ball pit
and get picked up again by the elevator.
There's usually at least 20 pins in any given machine,
this makes it so that there will be 10 pins ready to go
whenever they are needed.
If there's no one bowling for about a minute,
then the distributor will temporarily shut off
to save power.
Okay, so we've seen the 10 pin stations up here.
There's a mechanism under one of them.
Let's get a closer look.
The parts of the pin station are the ejector flap,
the retaining bow,
and the pin release lever.
The ejector flap sticks up in between the conveyor belt.
As the bowling pin comes down the feed lane,
it will be knocked right onto the pin station.
When that happens, it rests on the retaining bow.
The weight of the pin causes it to rotate,
which moves these gears,
which then allows the ejector flap to be lowered.
This means the next pin to come down the feed lane
will pass over this station and on to the next.
This happens at each pin station
so that a pin can move down the lane
until it finds the next open spot.
The last part on the pin station is the pin release lever.
When this is pressed up, it releases the retaining bow,
which means the bowling pin falls through.
Remember that there are 10 pin stations,
and this happens for most of them at the same time.
After that, each station is reset
so we are ready to receive more bowling pins again.
Directly below all of this is the setting table.
This is the part that finally sets the pins down
on the bowling lane.
There are 10 pin holders on top.
You can see how a bowling pin fits nicely inside
with the two grippers to hold it in place.
The pin holders are placed
directly below the 10 pin stations that we saw earlier.
When we are ready to receive more pins,
the grippers will be opened.
The setting table moves up,
which will hit the retaining bows on the pin stations above.
This will release the bowling pins to fall down.
Let's see what this looks like all together.
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And here's what this looks like from the top.
The pin holders on the setting table are mounted
on top of four swing shafts.
These are all connected by a system of levers.
This ensures that they all rotate at the same time.
When the lane is ready, the setting table lowers,
and all of the pin holders will rotate 90 degrees.
Notice how the two grippers are opened,
which release all of the bowling pins.
The can also be configured to set down only specific pins,
for example, maybe the player needs to practice bowling
in difficult scenarios.
In this case, when the setting table comes down,
only some of the grippers will be opened.
The rest of the pins come back up with the setting table.
We've seen that the pin holders rotate,
but I want to show you more specifically how this happens.
There's a spring at the end here
that pulls on the swing shaft,
causing all of the pin holders to go vertical.
Most of the time, this won't happen because of a tiny latch
at the end here that holds it all in place.
This holds all of the pin holders
in the horizontal position.
When it's time to set new pins, the latch is released,
but everything is still held in place
by the jam assembly arm.
This controls the rotation as it goes down.
As the table comes back up,
the wheel will once again hit the jam assembly arm,
which will overpower the spring at the other end.
The latch comes back on
and now we're locked in the horizontal position once again.
Usually, when you bowl, you don't knock over all 10 pins,
it would be nice, but, you know, it doesn't always happen.
In this case, the setting table comes down
and lifts the remaining pins up.
How does this work?
On the bottom of the setting table,
you've got a metal frame,
which has 10 holes for each of the 10 pins.
Inside, next to each hole,
you'll find a pair of spotting tongs.
This is what closes in and grabs onto each pin.
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The spotting tongs are opened and closed
by a complex gear system.
It's all controlled by this square shaft over here.
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One more feature of the setting table
is that it helps keep score.
On the bottom of each pin holder
is a pin detector plate.
This is how the machine finds out
how many pins are left standing.
The setting table comes down, and if the plate is pushed up,
then we know that the pin is still standing.
Now let's look at the sweep wagon.
Each bowling lane has sensors in front.
As soon as a bowling ball passes these sensors,
the sweep wagon comes down.
This prevents any pins from rolling back out onto the lane.
On the side here, you'll see two larger gears
with chains around them, we'll first focus
on the smaller one.
It controls the sweep crank arm.
When the gear rotates clockwise,
the arm moves all the way back and then forward again.
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Lifting the sweep wagon is done
by the sweep release assembly.
If we come over here to this view,
you can see that we'll need to grab onto this bar here.
It's very interesting how this happens.
The sweep release assembly is attached
to the other larger gear and chain over here,
this is all run by the same motor
that raises and lowers the setting table,
this happens twice.
The first time, it goes counter-clockwise,
the second time, it goes clockwise.
All together, here's what this looks like.
The first time, when the gear goes counter-clockwise,
the assembly comes down,
but barely misses grabbing onto the sweep wagon.
At the same time, the setting table comes down
to check the score and pick up any remaining pins
if there are any left.
Then the sweep goes back and forth.
Now the gear goes clockwise, the assembly comes down
at a different angle, and this time,
it grabs onto the sweep wagon.
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When that's happening, the remaining pins are set down.
Or in the case of a strike, all new pins are set down.
Now you're ready to bowl again.
At the end of the sweep release assembly
is a small piece called the tipper.
It can rotate back and forth.
When it's time to drop the sweep wagon,
the tipper will rotate.
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This fork-shaped piece is called the sweep attenuator.
It's what absorbs the impact when the sweep wagon falls.
Up at the top, we have the drive frame,
this is made up of three motors.
We have the distributor motor, the sweep motor,
and the table motor.
The distributor motor, this runs the conveyor belts
on the distributor, the pin elevator at the very back,
and the transport band at the very bottom.
The sweep motor, this runs the motion
of the sweep wagon going back and forth.
The table motor, this runs the raising
and lowering of the setting table.
This also includes the spotting tongs
when they open and close.
You can see now that a bowling pinsetter machine
has many different parts that must work together
to give you a good bowling experience.
Many of them work at the same time
to ensure that there's always a fresh set of pins
ready to go when you are.
On my YouTube channel, I've explained mechanisms like this,
and like this,
but maybe you'll also enjoy mechanisms like this,
or this,
or this.
These are hands-on projects from KiwiCo.
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Each project teaches about a STEAM-related concept,
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The project I just built is this stereo headphones.
I also had a little bit of help from my brother-in-law.
It was very satisfying
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Right now, KiwiCo is offering 50% off your first month
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Just go to kiwico.com/jaredowen
or click the link in the video description below.
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