(funky electronic music) - [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. (subdued upbeat electronic music) 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. (upbeat electronic music) 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. (upbeat electronic music) 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. (subdued upbeat electronic music) 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. (subdued upbeat electronic music) 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. (subdued funky electronic music) The spotting tongs are opened and closed by a complex gear system. It's all controlled by this
square shaft over here. (funky electronic music) 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. (funky electronic music) 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. (subdued funky electronic music) 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. (subdued funky electronic music) 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, and 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. The projects come in these
boxes, they call them crates, and it has everything you
need, the instructions and all the supplies, so you
don't need to go to the store. Each project teaches about
a STEAM-related concept, so science, technology,
engineering, art, and math. In order to build something
large and complex, like a bowling pinsetter machine, you have to start small and
learn the concepts first, but there's no reason you
can't have fun while doing it. KiwiCo offers eight
different subscription lines for the young children all
the way up to the adults. Each month, a new crate is
delivered right to your door with hours of entertainment inside. 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 when we finally completed the project. Right now, KiwiCo is offering
50% off your first month of any crate. Just go to kiwico.com/jaredowen or click the link in the
video description below. (funky electronic music)
Thanks, another interesting channel to subscribe to.
Love stuff like this. Thanks!