Hacker News Reader

Comment by slau | Hacker News Reader

I came across an interesting video about this a couple days ago: https://youtu.be/PwQQhQWU3nI

tl;dw: it reduces the moving parts from thousands to just a hundred, means that the relatively untrained staff can untangle a few pins every night, and not get crushed to death.

Apparently, bowling machines crushing people to death is not as uncommon as we might want it, and therefore, the industry was due for an upgrade.

Anecdotal: I went bowling last week, and my local bowling alley has switched over to this system (Denmark). It wasn’t terrible. I had much more of an issue with the state of the oil pattern than the pins or the pin setter. Our 3 lanes didn’t jam in 2 hours.

View on HN

A friend of mine told me once about working at his family's bowling alley after school one night and suddenly having his shirt ripped off him by one of the setting machines. He said it was sobering and he felt lucky he didn't go with it.

This feels so weird. The machines don't need to put that much force into the usual operation. We know how much the arm/scoop weights and the usual resistance the pins can give... So why would there be instances of people being crushed? We've got mechanical ways to restrict the force - what are the issues preventing adding that to the design?

Pins are pretty heavy, and the machine needs to throw them around pretty quickly

I'm surprised they don't have failsafes that would stop it immediately if it suddenly has an extra 130+ pounds of load

The common models in service haven’t really changed much since the 1970s.

I guess this is also the reason for the dangerously strong forces involved: lots of outputs (surfaces that move pins) powered from few big motors because there's hardly any control besides synchronisation through gears. If the market was big enough to support the adoption of robots arms to the pin setting use case there would be neither strings nor danger from old string-less machines.

robot arms are quite strong and pretty dangerous when "on task"

Chess robot breaks seven-year-old boy's finger during Moscow Open https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62286017

Industrial robots are far more dangerous as they can typically move fully in 3d, whereas an old mechanical system like these… yes it has a gazillion pinch points and minimal guards, but at least each movement will only do one thrust by (eg stroke back and forth or spin).

They're 1.5kg and the machine slides them, not lifts. Even if it did need to put exactly that much force to lift them, 15kg is really unlikely to kill you - toddlers keep jumping on parents without murdering them.

I recommend watching a video[1] about how these things work. I really don't see how it's feasible to make this complex, heavy machine inherently safe to stick your arms in. And keep in mind these machines have been iterated on for 100 years or more by multiple companies. Modern ones are full of safety features, but they revolve around lockouts, not making everything so weak it can't hurt you.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iod6uwUGM2E

thank you. I've only ever seen the string ones, and was wondering what is the older system

I don’t understand this attitude

Everything shown in the industry backs up the claim of its dangerousness to the point where this entire article revolves around an industry changing in order to make up for that.

Why would you, somebody who is not in the industry and has absolutely no clue about this, have an opinion this strongly held?

This was not an opinion about the machine or industry. I asked why the forces are necessary exactly because I don't know that part.

I disagree with the response about the pin weight, because I've got enough clue about mechanics and safety to know it's very unlikely to be a full explanation. The lifting happens either on a conveyor or the lift/harness. We have existing systems that can ensure you don't crush people with the weight itself this way. The dangerousness may come from different parts like higher torque motors, or exposed parts, or programming issues, or ... So feel free to comment on that if you know the answer.

Take a look at a video of a pin setting machine in action - https://youtu.be/Iod6uwUGM2E?si=BKNipS2E-geJEJEk, for example.

Basically, it's not just the force to move a single 1.5 kg pin. It's the force needed to move ten of those pins, plus the machinery for lifting and setting them into place, all of which needs to be overbuilt because it's being repeatedly hit by flying pins and possibly even the occasional ricocheting 7kg ball, and needs to stand up to that kind of treatment day in, day out for years or decades without completely falling apart. And then, because people like their games to keep moving, the drive mechanism for moving that whole huge assembly around needs to apply enough force to be able to raise and lower it quite quickly.

I'm no expert in any of this, but just taking one quick look at it I'm not at all surprised to find out that these machines are invariably hazardous. And probably most the ones in operation are even scarier than the one in that video I linked above, because it's a relatively recent model and, at least at the place I have been bowling, all the equipment looks like it could easily be older than I am.

If you want a system that only needs to be able to apply enough force to lift a single 1.5kg pin, well, it sounds like that's why the string setting machine was invented.

>Why would you, somebody who is not in the industry and has absolutely no clue about this, have an opinion this strongly held?

This happens absolutely constantly on cough various websites around the internet. People who are always the smartest people in the room in their industries commenting on topics like pinsetting machines. Pinch hazards are unbelievably dangerous and kill or maim lots of people every year. Operator fatigue, poor design, and thousands of other factors obviously contribute. But they wouldn't know because they've never worked in those spaces.

Unlikely to kill you yes but yet still very dangerous. They can rip you up REALLY bad.

There's elevators, gears, levers, belts and chains and stuff in there. Pinsetters are full of pinch hazards and move multiple pins and balls around at the same time. It's not a trivial amount of force, especially if you consider how the tension in a chain translates to a crushing force if you get in between a sprocket and chain, or how the the force in a 1m long arm lifting a 1.5kg pin translates to a crushing force at the centre of rotation. Not to mention the machines are beefy and have to withstand parts of them being hit by 10kg bowling balls. A quick google search indicates a pinsetter machine weighs more than a ton. You could easily lose your shirt, finger or get your hoodie strings caught in there. You'd have to be unlucky to die but it's happened.

"Just restricting the force" doesn't work because the force at pinch points will be huge in normal operation and the extra force to slice your finger off at a pinch point would be noise compared to all the other forces.

I also ask myself: why isn't the pin setter machine always completely powered off when any maintenance is done? If this does not suffice, add a photoelectric barrier that immediately cuts the power of the pin setter machine if it is crossed by some maintenance personal.

Valid question but the reason is the mechanics in the back are usually a salty kind (and some drink a LOT in the back) and they'll get a call to fix a lodged pin or something and decide to not turn the power off and bad things sometimes happen. I knew one back in the day that ripped up his arm really bad and had to take a lot of time off.

In those cases, the fault isn't the machines, it's the negligence of the mechanics.

Where I work, we produce industrial machines that could rip you in half without a hiccup. As a result we (like all industries that use hazardous equipment) have a very strong lock out/tag out policy.

I remember in training they warned us that at customer sites, it's common for the customer's employees to be averse to LOTO because of the time and hassle involved, and they may try to pressure us to skip LOTO procedures. We are expressly prohibited from doing so, but the negligence is real.

100%. My father in law has spent a lot of time in industrial space and he told me they setup dual buttons for some machines so you are required to press them both with both hands. This prevents them from having a free arm at risk.

You have to prevent people from going rogue, otherwise they will.

Johnwalkr had some good reasons. The machines are old, with gears and belts to transfer motion not something made with separate motors for each motion. I never saw the specific machine I am mentioning but I wouldn't be surprised if protective parts of the machines stayed off to make it easier to fix malfunctions.

The machines were designed at a different time. I've been in the back of a few alleys as a kid and they seemed a few steps, but not that many, beyond the shops where all tools were driven by belts from the ceiling. For example power looms severely injured people in a time before they were designed with safety guards and that's just moving thread>

It's not an upgrade though. Well, perhaps for the "industry" it's an upgrade, but it's a downgrade for the game itself.

Maybe, but if maintaining the current standard of the game requires the sacrifice of multiple human lives each year then it doesn't seem like there is much of an argument against downgrading.

Ban them both and go back to pinboys, I say. Best of both worlds (free pins and no fatalities).

And employment opportunities galore!

That's a false dichotomy, it doesn't "require" the sacrifice, they could definitely make the machines more safe, or make working on them safer, but likely they were made before worker safety was considered so critical and "pinsetter mechanic" is probably too niche to get special work safety provisions.

They have made them safer—by reducing the complexity of the machines and the frequency of necessary human intervention by adding strings to pull the pins back into place.

Yeah, that's not what is meant above by "machines", they mean machines that have equivalent function, not machines that result in a different game.

Looking at accident reports, it sounds like there are some easy changes, adding guards to the machines and changing industry practices to de-energize the machines during the maintenance activity: https://www.atlantictraining.com/blog/bowling-alley-worker-s...

They could make them safer without making the game worse, though.

You are presenting the classic logical fallacy of

We must do something

This is a thing

Therefore we must do this.

There are other ways they could make the machine safer that don't involve adding strings and thereby changing the game.

Yeah, this isn't Vietnam. This is bowling. There are rules.

How many is multiple? The only information I can find says it's 4 a year

https://raisedbyturtles.org/bowling-deaths-double

It's even better when supposedly one of these deaths occurred due to "Extreme bowling" which apparently involves a half pipe. So yeah, this comes off as extremely misleading and just for clicks.

You'd probably save more lives banning all the beer and unhealthy food served at the alley, or by banning sports with a higher death toll, like soccer.

Strikes me as a way for alleys to operate cheaper by several magnitudes, and then just cover that up in safety rather than say "look people don't want to pay enough to bowl with machines"

Is there a world where 4 is not more than one?

My god people still post worthless sarcastic crap like this?

Multiple can range from 2 to 2 million and magnitude matters.

I'm sorry, but you were the one suggesting that 4 deaths somehow didn't suffice to meet the criteria of "multiple deaths" which seems absurd and in defiance of any common use of the language.

There's only one hobby that we are more than happy to give a blood offering for, and it's not bowling.

What hobby is that?

Guns.

There is no sacrifice. It's negligence.

It’s an upgrade of it makes bowling alleys less expensive, or helps keep existing ones in business or helps open up the market for new ones. We are losing bowling alleys at a rapid clip, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good here.

Some people just want to play a traditional game with no strings attached.

If an economic system continuously gets in the way of having nice things, the problem isn't the nice things.

Community-centric recreation spaces are getting squeezed out in general, because fewer people have disposable income. And it's not just bowling alleys, with the complex equipment. Skating rinks are basically just a warehouse with some lines on the ground, and they've been going away too.

Disposable income is not down (except from the pandemic). It's near an all-time high, like the economy in general. https://www.statista.com/statistics/710215/us-disposable-inc...

If skating rinks are going away I would bet they are being replaced by entertainment for people with _more_ disposable income, like trampoline parks. It's a rich country.

It requires account. Also, average does not say much about actual number of people with increased disposable income, that's what matters on this market. What about median?

That says disposable income per capita is up, but nothing about how it is distributed. Give Elon and a few others an extra 50 billion each and that will bump the national average even if everyone else goes slightly backwards.

So look at median, not average disposable income.

Some people just want to play the game at all, but the nearest bowling alley still in business is 30-40 miles away.

Getout.gif

It's a downgrade for everyone else.

> We are losing bowling alleys at a rapid clip, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good here.

This isn't a case of perfect being the enemy of good. The strings aren't good. If that's the future of bowling, then I'm not bowling in the future and no longer care if bowling alleys go away.

Half as Interesting does a lot of explaining what things are and asserting that there is a controversy instead of describing what specifically is controversial or getting bowlers' opinion on the change. I guess that's why we have the LA Times article to read.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com