What would you do?

I fucking HATE the string machines. They get tangled CONSTANTLY!

Sounds like a business opportunity for every mechanic

I am a certified A2 Brunswick mechanic, and it is definitely a dying craft. I became certified through Peanuts course in Henderson, Nevada. Luckily my boss is invested in our machines and doesn't want to convert. I maintain a ten lane center.😁 Unfortunately you're totally right about parts becoming obsolete. Oftentimes when Bowlero buys out a center to convert to string pins, they destroy the A2s so no one can buy the old parts.

I'd rather switch to paying people to do it by hand than use the string machines for actual competitions.

I would never even consider going to a bowling ally that uses strings.

At some point in owning a bowling alley, i feel like YOU need to end up being the mechanic to have it be feasible.

"built in the 1960's" "been running for almost a decade" wat.

almost a Century?* decade = 10 years

Brunswick makes brand new free fall machines. The options aren't just keep the old machines or switch to string pins. Centers just need to upgrade to newer free fall machines. And it's not like you have to do the whole Center at once. Do 10 machines at a time. The removed machines become parts for the old machines that are still there with the added bonus that not all your machines are the same age.

This sounds like a robotics startup waiting to happen.

String pin changes how the pins act, fundamentally a different game.

Those string machines change the game entirely. The fact that a pin and roll and knock over another pin is the why. Those strings block rolling pins. It’s not bowling if the pins aren’t free.

What bothers me the most is when they have string pins and still have high prices. my local bowling center switched to string pins and have doubled their price within a year. I could deal with string pins if they dropped prices to account for the reduced maintenance cost.

I played stringpin all of once. The amount of times it got the pins wrong or counted things that didn't go down was enough to scare me away from them forever.

Authentic bowling alleys make me feel like a kid again I love them

Never switch to strings.

Dude you are a breath of fresh air. I love you putting light on this topic because quite frankly as someone who doesn’t know shit about bowling, the BHS of how those machines work always made me curious. This type of discussion of a dying art being replaced and driven by corporate innovation speaks to a larger problem of repair materials. Cheap part, and cost cutting measures that make you pay so much more and suck the life out of the experience. Dont get me wrong, this does not mean that there doesn’t need to be innovation and smart decisions to be made to keep a facility like that running; however I do think that a change in value might bring a perspective in industry. A change back to longevity and repair, rather than brittle efficiency and destroying, something seen in the right to repair movement, will keep those buisnesses alive, keep the skilled trades, and promote a welcome environment consistent with the experiences everyone loves

if every alley stays strong on these pinsetters, surely Brunswick would have to see it's worth it to supply brand new parts and encourage new mechanics to take the old ones places...

At the risk of asking a dumb question, why can’t you pay one of these people to train up an in-house technician to repair them?

You will lose probably 50% of your customers. If your bowling pins were held by strings.