Pinsetter


In bowling, a pinsetter or pinspotter is an automated mechanical device that sets bowling pins back in their original positions, returns bowling balls to the front of the alley, and clears fallen pins on the pin deck. Prior to the machine's invention, pinsetters were boys or young men hired at bowling alleys to manually reset pins and returned balls to the player. The first mechanical pinsetter was invented by Gottfried Schmidt, who sold the patent in 1941 to AMF. Pinsetting machines have largely done away with pinsetting as a manual profession, although a small number of bowling alleys still use human pinsetters. While humans usually no longer set the pins, a pinchaser is often stationed near the equipment to ensure it is clean and working properly, and to clear minor jams.
Beginning in the 1970s, modern pinsetters were integrated with electronic scoring systems of varying sophistication. Many pinsetters have a manual reset button in case they do not automatically activate after a ball is rolled. Others have no automatic tracking of the state of the game, especially in candlepin and duckpin bowling sports, which use smaller balls, and in which the machines are manually activated.

Common terms and design features

The designs of automatic pinsetters vary depending on each company's hardware implementations, and on a particular bowling sport's rules and specifications. Bowling-game variants may use different sizes, shapes, and weights of pins and balls, requiring equipment specifically made to handle them.
Part descriptions common to nearly all pinspotting units include:
  • Sweep bar – removes fallen and leftover pins from the pin deck. It may also stay lowered throughout the pinsetter operating cycle, to act as the primary physical protective barrier against improperly thrown balls. The sweep bar is activated by ball movement when it enters the pit, usually via an optical sensor.
  • Table – places the pins onto the lane for the next frame, then lifts the remaining pins for the sweep bar to remove fallen pins for the bowler's next roll.
  • Deck – a fixed sheet-metal enclosure, usually fastened to the spotting table's framework and diagonal forward frame edges, that provides secondary protection for the spotting table system from improperly thrown balls and flying pins, and covers the pin chutes used to transfer the pins from the characteristic, cage-like Brunswick-design rotating pin storage turret above the table downwards into the deck for transfer onto the pin deck.
  • Pit – a collection area behind the lane where balls and struck pins collect for sorting.
  • Pin elevator – brings pins upwards out of the lane's pit to the top of the unit for re-setting for subsequent frames to deliver pins upwards from the pit into the pin storage system. In ten-pin units, it is usually in the form of a vertically oriented toroid-shaped system at the extreme rear of the pinspotter.
  • A pin storage system that receives fallen pins from the pin elevator system, and stores them to be used as the next full rack of pins. It may be within or part of the table, or above and/or behind the table.
  • Ball return – removes the bowler's ball from the lane's pit and returns it to the bowler via the ball return track, located between paired lane beds, back to the ball return unit at the heads of the lanes. The ball lift is designed to separate the ball from the fallen pins in the pit, and does not send pins into the ball return track. The track is normally below the lane, although earlier pinsetters have above-lane tracks similar to those of older manual lanes. Above-lane ball returns remain used today as a low-cost alternative for miniature arcade bowling lanes, which use scaled-down balls and pins.
  • Pin turret - a form of pin storage used by Brunswick's Model A-series ten-pin pinspotters ' and emulated in part by some other manufacturers.
  • Scoring sensor''' - Sensors that detect standing pins and sends it as scoring information to the scoring system. A scoring sensor may be integrated into the pinsetter mechanism itself, or using a small camera that captures the image of standing pins.

    Early designs

In the mid-1800s, various alternatives to free-standing pins received U.S. patents to solve perceived problems in pinsetting and ball return, aiming to avoid the need for human pinsetters. One scheme involved pins with spherical bases that, when hit by a ball, merely fell over in place, then were rotated back to a vertical position. A second arrangement involved resetting the pins via cords descending from respective pin bottoms to weights beneath the pin deck. Another design involved suspending the pins with overhead cords.
In the decades preceding the introduction of fully automatic units, semi-automatic pinsetters such as the Brunswick B-1 and B-10, with a manually filled "table" similar to those of fully automatic units and operating much the same as the later units, were used by human pinsetters to speed up manual operation and assure accurate spotting. The oldest operational bowling facility in the United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Holler House, which opened in September 1908, is one of the few remaining all-manually operated alleys that still uses Brunswick "table-style" manual units.

Ten-pin pinsetters

AMF pinspotters

The AMF family of pinspotters, first marketed in 1952 are the first used in quantity in the industry. They have changed little since the mass-produced 82-30 version. There are three main pinspotter models: the aforementioned 82-30 ; the 82-70 ; and the newest versions, the 82-90 and the 82-90XLI, both of which use the 82-70's general mechanical design. AMF pinspotters were originated by American Machine and Foundry and are now manufactured by QubicaAMF Worldwide. All operate generally the same way, with small improvements.
The 82-30's operation and mechanics, having been significantly developed from AMF's pioneering 82-10 experimental model, which depended much on the use of suction to hold the pins in a double-sided spotting table for both spotting remaining pins and setup of new racks of pins, are quite different from the Model A, A-2 and JetBack units from Brunswick, with differing sweep and table designs, and especially in how the pins are handled for storage, after they got to the top of the machinery. After the bowler rolls their ball, and knocking down the pins, the ball strikes the pit cushion block. This activates the machine, which lowers the sweep to the guard position. Then the table descends and the respot cells close around each neck of the standing pins. The cells that have pins in them complete electrical circuits that send scoring information to the display, and turned on one or more of ten "pindicator" lights – pioneered by AMF in May 1953 – in an electrically illuminated triangular framed screen on the pinspotter's masking unit in front of the machine, to identify remaining pins.
After the table lifts the remaining pins, the machine runs the sweep, clearing dead pins from the pin deck, then returns to the guard position. Ball and pins travel on a continuously running carpet belt at the bottom of the pit. The ball, being heavier, travels to one of the side kick-backs where it enters the ball return, shared by adjacent lanes. The pins travel under the cushion into the ring-shaped, revolving circular pin elevator, at the rear center of the unit, which brings the pins up to a "distributor arm" that travels laterally as well as forward and back over the table to deliver the pins to the corresponding bins or "spotting cups" as known in the 82-30's factory manuals, awaiting the next spotting cycle. In the 82-30, its semi-cylindrical "spotting cup" bins are part of the visible spotting table suspended below the table's frame, each at a roughly a 45° angle with each "cup" inclined, pin-base-forward, in front of each spotting cell, and clearly visible to the bowler whenever the table approaches its lowermost position. After the table returns to its upper position, the sweep also lifts, and the machine shuts down to await the next ball. For spotting the new rack of pins, the 82-30 version tilts the pin-filled spotting cups vertically as the table descends, and tilts the cups slightly rearwards to clear the new rack of pins just as the table starts upwards, leaving the new rack of pins spotted on the lane for the next frame. Should the spotting cups not yet be filled with a full rack of ten pins for the next frame, the sweep bar pauses in its forward "guard" position after its rearwards stroke to clear any fallen pins, until the cups all have pins in them, with the table only descending when the cups have all filled, and are ready to set them onto the pin deck.
Beginning in December 1961, the 82-30 units also became famous for having the "Sparemaker" version of the earlier triangular pindicator screen on their masking units as advertised by AMF and their staff's pro bowler Dick Weber, which added a set of eleven lighted "arrows" to the usual numbered ten lights for standing pins, triangular corner lights that indicated the first or second ball to be rolled, and separate lights to indicate a foul, or a strike. The "arrows" were for the purpose of advising an inexperienced bowler to assist in spare conversion, by indicating where a second ball delivery should hit the remaining pins for a successful conversion, and were triggered by appropriate combinations of standing pins that helped the machine select which one of the eleven arrows to illuminate.
There have been specific upgrades and improvements made to the machines produced after the 82-30, with after-market solid-state/microprocessor-operated controllers available for the 82-30 itself. The 82-70 is the general standard in most AMF-equipped modern bowling centers today. It features a microprocessor-operated chassis that is upgraded to short cycle the machine for strikes, gutter balls, or 7–10 pick-offs. It features solid state motors. The 82-90 and the 82-90XLI are further upgrades, basically using the 82-70's mechanics, which replaced the older, completely electro-mechanical controls with machine status indicator lights, much more sophisticated "pin storage" design, single control centers that handle two machines, and perhaps the most important upgrade is the self shutdown control, which shuts the machine down to prevent damage from continuing to operate with a fault. The 82-90 models feature a deck that is thinner than the 82-70.
QubicaAMF Worldwide has also introduced many different scoring systems that are compatible with all pinsetters and pinspotters.