CPR BEGINS its NEW BUSINESS MODEL
Announcement June 29, 2018

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After 14 years working in parts reproduction for the hobby, we are pleased to announce that CPR is completely changing it's production model to something absolutely revolutionary for reproduction parts making. This takes effect immediately. This underlying foundational change will also be accompanied by some other much-needed upgrades, which will come online shortly. More on that in a minute...

First and foremost, this coming week begins the official launch of CPR's new Digital Production Suite. The biggest investment in our history. We had been building to this moment for a very long time. Literally a brand spanking new facility, completely owned and ours, for the creation of perfection-level quality reproduction parts. Featuring a giant digital press, which is now by far the largest and most expensive piece of equipment CPR has invested in, to date. We're betting our future on this beautiful baby, and it's going to change how we deliver repro parts to the hobby forever.

Since February, we explored with stringent due diligence, the trials and print tests, and considerable financial planning. Even though the investment was scary, the technology had undeniably come to the point where we could look away no longer. The time to wean ourselves off silkscreen printing tech and equipment from the 1980's was simply a reality we had to face. Digital presses were just too good, reliable, clean, and turnaround times blew oldschool screening away. So reality won, and we set in motion the path to a major upgrade. After all the freight, suite construction, installation, training, and trials... the keys to this new ride are now ours to do as we see fit. Now it's time.

With this suite, comes the complete shift of the CPR production model. Traditional silkscreening had us bootstrapped to "runs" ... meaning a SINGLE reproduction project (glass, plastics set, or playfield) had to be all batched together into one big upfront production run. Our model of 14 years was doing it this way. To bring you a single new release, a week or two had to be laid out to print 100-200 pieces of the same thing. One color at a time, with hours of drying in between. Taking advantage of precious press time - making sure to make plenty to justify the week(s) of time and expense... and all those individual press setups, runs, and teardowns... sometimes 8-14... just to create one repro project. Then that one item went up for sale. One item. Then onto the next one.

Each CPR product would sit online and sell, until it drew down to "sold out" (taking months to YEARS). Then once it was gone, and say it took two years for all 100+ items to go, we would then sit "sold out"... The hobby had seen the repro items come and go. The only way to see them again was a "re-run" - where we start all over again, and go through the same thing, to produce another big batch - and release it again. But as we all know, re-runs are rare - due to the risk of the second go-around selling to an already 90%-served market. Re-runs get sales, but it depends. Many CPR projects dating all the way back to 2004 had been mothballed - considered not worth the risk to make 100+ again... with no hope of that ever changing. The barrier? The silkscreening model.

What if we could make one at a time?

Starting now, this IS the reality at CPR. This changes everything - not only here - but for repro in the hobby at large. This is a staggering new reality here - so let this sink in - THERE IS NOW NO SUCH THING AS A MINIMUM RUN SIZE AT CPR. We can make ten. We can make fifty. We can make one. No barriers to market any longer.

So what does this mean? Going forward, CPR will be immediately moving our Plastics and Backglasses printing exclusively to this suite. Playfields will continue to be silkscreened when done in the large first-release-type batches - but here's the kicker: Once those big first batches sell out, we will be introducing Made-For-You individual playfields, which will be printed in the digital suite. That means theoretically no CPR playfield will ever go out of stock in the distant future. Nobody will ever have to wait for a re-run. CPR playfields will be perpetually "re-run" as individual one-offs, as ordered by customers... on demand ! But that's down the road a bit. The main change right now are Plastics and Backglasses.

With no "re-runs" needed anymore... we now begin the opening of the floodgates to EVERY CPR PLASTIC SET and BACKGLASS going all the way back to 2004 (all 130+ legacy products that have been sold out for years to a over a decade) to become available, perpetually, until the day we retire. These will release in waves, as we convert and re-tool our legacy art packages for the new press. This will take the next few months to see it all released. The hobby will enjoy the availability of these items at ALL TIMES. Meaning, the tricky predicting and planning while seeing our past releases come and go, will all be a thing of the past. You won't have to contemplate your future collection plans, machines you hope to buy, machines you WILL buy, etc into the future... worrying whether to buy now when available. We'll have them available until the day we retire. Huge difference. All 14 years of past product are coming back "IN STOCK" ... beginning now.

**Quality: Our digital press has print/ink quality to staggering photographic levels - meaning detail in microns. No longer will we be pushing ink through silk mesh shapes. As a 14 year silkscreener and purist, I had to concede that this tech had finally surpassed traditional spot-color screening. Not only in detail, but consistency and cleanliness of the print(s). Our 4-years of producing CMYK (photographic/watercolor painting) style backglasses, for example, have seen results both of the good and the not-so-good. There was no control with silkscreening. Your image was what the film lab separated into dots for your screens. Coarse dots, at that. Only half to a third of the resolution of the original glasses (you can't raster new dots any finer from old source). Again, we were bootstrapped and limited by the tech and realities of screening. Not anymore! CMYK type backglasses can now be produced picture-perfect, with virtually zero loss from the NOS source. Glasses with mirror will be hybrids - screened mirror, digital ink layers. Those will be the last glasses to come online. Looking deeper into the future, we have realized dozens of potential capabilities that CPR can grow into. We'll cross those bridges when we get there. But for example - there would be no reason that CPR couldn't introduce a line of playfield hard-tops for every CPR playfield we have ever done back to 2004... taking care of that price point for restorers / fixer-uppers that otherwise wouldn't justify (or couldn't afford) a $600-$800 playfield. Made one-at-a-time, on demand. We shall see.

**Boutique items and Personal Projects: Looking out further into the future, we're going to get to the point where we can finally attack those "boutique" playfields, glasses, and plastics sets that barely had 25 people signed up to buy, after 3-4 years. The ones that never had a hope in hell of ever being justified to go into (silkscreening) production. NOW THEY ARE VIABLE. Heck, now even if there was ONE signup ... it's now technically viable. Once we get the mainline/legacy products rolling for months to a year, those doors open up to taking on very small runs - serving 1-25 people. This will also eventually extend into a new CPR offering - Personal projects that YOU commission! The ground rules aren't set in stone yet, but roughly it will mean: Any talented/superfan pinballer with a dream - can make it reality ! Meaning, if you lay out the artwork, cuts (if necessary), and present CPR with your project - we CAN and WILL make you that ONE playfield/glass/plastics. If it's for an existing machine, we are thinking about doing it for FREE - IF you allow us to shelve the design materials you provided, and allow us to make/sell other copies to those that need them. If no order(s) come in, that's our risk. Just an idea. A distant idea for this model. But it's completely possible. Pet projects? Rethemes? Custom one-off games? YES - CPR will be the hobby's turnkey shop to make those playfields, glasses, plastics a reality. EVEN IF ITs ONLY ONE. Remember, we're no longer bootstrapped by minimum runs of "100" on the old silkscreen model.

**New Web Site: We FINALLY have a new CPR web site completed. Currently going through beta testing and product/data entry. It is a complete do-over that will replace the legacy web site we've had on our domain for over a decade. FINALLY it will be current to standards of the present. Auto-formatting to browser/device (PC, tablet, phone). Most Importantly (and super-duper FINALLY) CPR will have an automated online Store - with account creation, shopping cart, and Checkout. We had been long overdue to make this step - and in weeks to come, we'll announce it's release ... which will also include a WHOLE NEW (FOURTH) PRODUCT LINE for CPR. Playfields...Backglasses...Plastics Sets... ???????? Tune in to find out.

9 plastics sets and 11 backglasses just hit the site - the first wave of legacy items being brought back online. I'll announce them in a separate post.

Thanks.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Interesting idea. Never thought of this possibility. The answer is YES.

In fact, it's fairly simple to do in the Rip that runs the press. Select one (or any) of the solid colors, and override the master color(s) with a new one.

Costs nothing more, and can be set up in minutes. So not just you - if anybody has a custom color idea for any reason, to any plastics or glass, for color changes - it can be as simple as shooting us an email explanation after your PayPal payment for the product is sent in. Make green... purple 272C. Make red... pink 211C. It's really that easy. You don't even need to explain why. Some people may simply want something "one of a kind" in their fave game.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Yes. When we get to the point where we're ready to accept those kind of projects from individuals in the hobby, that will be the whole point.

If anybody has a dream theme, and has laid out their playfield, glass, and/or plastics artwork for a re-theme, one-off, personal project - we WILL be able to run that project and make it reality. Being just one copy is no longer a barrier to entry. That was the whole mission of the new digital suite.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Okey dokey. Will be in the next wave of releases in a week or so.

Eventually someday, yes. For right now, we don't want to give away how it all works, how the room is all set up, what system we bought, etc. A ton of time and effort was spent doing all the due diligence, and we don't want to lay out a visual how-to guide on how to make this happen. Hope everybody understands.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Yes. All we'd need is the master files for the glass and playfield, and a sanded-off Flash playfield, sent to us. We'd do the rest.

We're keeping our cards close to our chest on this one. As I commented up further, we don't want to lay out a how-to guide after all the due diligence we went through. It was a ton of trials, tests, and work. As for gamut - yes, silkscreening (hand mixed spot inks) do have a slight upper-hand for some rare colors (extremely brights and hots, for example). There will be no metallics, those layers would have to be screened. Mirror (as in the case of some glasses) will still have to be screened. But as for like "98%" of the traditional color requirements for the vast majority of pinball stuff, I couldn't deny any longer holding onto the silkscreen model forsake of a few colors here and there being slightly compromised. It's more important everything be available, and the product-to-market model is completely replaced with something with near-zero barriers.

Could be done tomorrow. I'd need the artwork and the cutline. We could make one. We could make 100. Easy.

We have internally talked about this. Yes, it's possible. Introducing "Easy Break" selections as individual pieces. But we haven't made a final decision on that yet (baby steps!). There is also a dynamic to effecting plastics sets sales that needs to be considered. How much or how little that is considerable is an unknown right now. But we do have to think about it.

Nothing has changed. All the inboxes containing all the folks raising their hands with committments to playfield runs, are still here. Our pipe will continue to move playfields along, and those runs will be silkscreened (the batches are still big enough, and the product is essentially all presold). Once runs emerge from clearcoat, the traditional method of emailing 100+ folks with payment instructions will still happen as normal.

Once we finish getting all the legacy plastics sets & backglasses up on the site and considered "In Stock" - then we'll move onto legacy playfields. That will mean that all CPR playfield titles going back to 2004 will become "In Stock" and available to order, on-demand. Once we get an order, we make you a playfield. The one-off legacy playfields will be digital print. This means 14 years of sold-out titles will all be available again, perpetually. No need of "re-runs" ever again. We'll make just one at a time. I think our turnaround will be 3 weeks or so for a "Made For You" playfield. Most of that time is seeing the playfield through our clearcoater (who does loads of 50-100 every couple weeks).

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Yes, much easier. The barrier-to-market has been completely lifted, due to there being no minimum run size. Take for example, Genesis plastics... kind of obscure, there are a few fans out there, but there is no way we (previously) could justify doing the artwork and silkscreening for minimum 100 Genesis plastics sets... Now if a few Genesis guys get together and produce the artwork, we can literally make just three sets for them. In other words, the weirdest and D-list items can now be produced. as long as somebody takes the initiative to do the artwork. We will still introduce our OWN artworks for ongoing new releases, but those will be more B-list or better. We'll play in the space of 25-50 potential market, for our purposes. But at least now that's a heck of a lot more open to possibilities than the former "minimum 100", and sitting on unsold stock for years due to such a small audience.

Precisely. One-off re-themes are no problem, and no licensing needs to get involved. But it literally means ONE-off's... we won't get into doing multiple copies of licensed themes. Our role for homebrew projects will be "hired production shop" to make your parts a reality.

Somebody get us the Pool Sharks artwork done up, and we'll make them. As I mentioned in the announcement, I think I'm going to lean toward giving the art creator(s) their copie(s) for FREE, as long as they allow us to archive their artwork to make/sell other copies to those that need them. But the bottom line is, anybody in this hobby now has the power to make a repro release happen - something they've always wanted/needed - no matter how "D-list" the project.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

The new model, to apply it to playfields, would mean we'd need to keep a stock of all the inserts needed to make any past CPR playfield, on hand. Then they're there to grab the variety needed, once an order comes in off the site. So inserts will be on hand. Most are already here NOW, with a few exceptions in waiting.

You are correct. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Our current aim right now is getting the ~130 plastics and glasses, all the way back to 2004, out of the theoretical mothballs and up for sale. THEN we'll look at bringing each playfield online, from the past.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

PPS is still the B/W IP license holder, and we will continue to be partnered with them with royalties on anything and everything Bally/Williams we produce. Even if only one is made. We will still take care of that as we always have.

Any old film sets for plastics and glasses won't be of any use on our new platform. If we're making less than 100 (heck, even less than 50), we won't be silkscreening. So old films (if they exist) won't be the format we need or use. Yes, it will be a redraw effort. New freshly drawn layout(s) will be required. Once that is done, 1 can be made, 17 can be made, 50 can be made... it won't matter. Whatever the market orders over time.

They key message is that you, or anybody, can take the reins and bring a historically unconsidered repro project to reality. Even if it's something "silly" that might only ever sell 4 copies. If somebody has the ambition, and steps up with the proper artwork - we'll produce it.

Noted. Will be available in the next wave (see other thread for wave announcements).

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

In-house one-off on-demand production capability does change the dynamic in the hobby...

It very well may cause your suggested effect. Although there may be purists out there who assess higher 'value' to the past silkscreened releases being more "earthy and original" on an artwork technical level. Who knows.

This also will soon bring the end to the recent trend of other playfield makers deciding to trod in CPR run & re-run 'territory'. It was odd to watch other maker(s) decide to duplicate our efforts already underway, or already completed years ago - to produce the same playfield title. There would never really be any good reason to start from scratch, do all the CAD and CNC design, get the artwork commissioned, just to make the same title that's already in our wheelhouse - where we already have all the groundwork done. Such as choosing future playfield releases we have coming (with CPR publicly collecting preorders for year(s) to measure viable run size) and deciding to just announce them and make "however many needed" and thus leapfrog our release to market... just seemed aggressive. Also - making all that investment to start from scratch, re-do all that ground development, to make re-runs of past CPR playfields, thus taking away all our future re-run possibilities...

Well... all that kinda ends now. Time for playfield makers to pick NEW, UNIQUE, and UNTOUCHED playfield titles, and *not* duplicate work (a waste of time and resources) on the same titles. We should all stay in our lanes, and as a combined effort, cover producing completely different playfield titles. Diversity as opposed to duplication. I think everybody would agree. Plus it's damn odd to have the same playfield come out from two different makers at roughly the same time. I mean, why? Those could have been TWO different playfield releases. A waste of time and resources. Plus somebody is left holding the bag on unsold stock - because the hobby cannot support the sales of all the same title playfields from multiple makers. The market is not big enough.

There will be a very narrow window of time, probably the balance of 2018, where whoever is planning to make playfield titles from the CPR back-catalog, better seriously reconsider investing time and money into programming, tooling, testing, and artwork commissioning... because we're already THERE. Once we have them up for on-demand one-at-a-time ordering... there will be no responsible need for anybody else to invest in bringing a legacy CPR playfield title to market ever again. We'll have all those titles covered, and perpetually available, until the day we retire CPR.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Do anything with known IP that you like... but we're only going to produce ONE copy for custom projects involving third party IP. It's well known in the hobby that you ARE allowed to make a "fan" machine in your own home. One. Not several. But you can't sell it, or decide to run more if others like the design of what you made. If you do - that's on you. We won't be making more than one copy for anybody, in those cases.

If you have a custom/original design that people end up loving, then great - we can run as many as needed for your friends/peers who want one.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Simple answer. There was no Future Spa artwork. Stu would have had to start from scratch, while the Paragon and SI artworks were available in original factory film sets - but needed major work to bring them to usability. Starting from the 50% mark on two large, detailed art packages was way more feasible than starting from nothing.

But there you go - Future Spa - a perfect respectable selection available for another playfield maker to stake claim to.

This is why multiple playfield makers in the hobby is a great thing. Spread the work around, folks! Everybody should be making completely different titles IMHO.

PPS has the same goal the hobby has - getting as much product into production and released as possible, as soon as possible.

If CPR has 14 years of playfield runs in our rear view mirror, with the hope of very few of them ever coming back up for a re-run (we're booked solid - look at our Preorder Page obligations) ... then it is only logical that alternate permission will be given to another maker that is saying "I can make those this year"

Thus, it was seen necessary that stuff from our back catalog could to be shunted to another maker. A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.

So this new production model, for us, solves the problem of 14 years of mothballed playfield designs sitting with little hope of ever being run again. Now they can all be made available, and made-to-order as the demand dictates. We no longer have to commit to 100 of each, to see 30+ playfields come back from the dead. So this tips the table back, to where we can be responsible for our own back-catalog. If others want to make the same titles going forward, well OK... but it's going to be a waste of time and resources IMHO

For the future one-off on-demand playfields (when the silkscreened ones are all gone) - the digital press printed playfields will always be "gold" level.

Which makes sense - because even if a playfield comes out of the press with a little blem on it - we can sand it off and run it through again. Think about that for a moment. With silkscreening, which took 1-2 weeks to lay down 8-14 colors one at a time, and a batched run of 100-200 playfields... you couldn't go back to reprint *anything*. We got what we got.

But notice that they have announced a run of Joust playfields coming - and Joust is a widebody form factor. So I don't believe they are bound to any width limits, any more than we are.

That depends on if hard top makers are willing to maximize their potential artwork monetization. Meaning, use it for themselves, AND montetize it to a playfield maker as well. There is a plain fact that even if no repro playfield is available, that the majority of a playfield-needing audience will STILL not cave to the availability of a hard top or traditional overlay as a half-measure. Simply because the prep/swap work is almost the same investment of time and work. Most are not willing to undertake all that work, unless it's a full blown playfield. That is an untapped market that hard top makers will never touch. No matter how much they cling to their artwork. So, the wiser move to maximize revenue would be to provide the less expensive option to the market, serving those customers on that willingness / budget level... meanwhile ALSO making a monetization deal for the playfield artwork with a playfield maker to take care of the $800+ playfield product market. The two groups barely overlap, IMHO.

The bottom line is, somebody who has the time open, has got to develop the artwork in order for Future Spa to become reality - regardless of product format.

Yes. We'll eventually get to a new version of this. Baby steps.

For those of you who don't know what this was, it was a compromise measure for the budget-conscious, where we used to allow people to send us stripped/sanded-off original playfields to merge into a repro playfield run, for silkscreening and clearcoating. So you got a brand new playfield topside, but your physical playfield and inserts were original. It was a $300 service - cheaper than a hard top !

The downside was the service was only available at-time-of-repro... because the silkscreening sessions were only going to happen once.

Now, with the new digital suite, we will be able to offer this type of service any day of the year, on any CPR playfield title (past or present) that we have digital artwork masters for.

Digital has advantages, silkscreening has advantages. Both have inherent disadvantages. Here's how:

. . .

Silkscreening advantages: No color limitations. Any and all spot colors can be mixed. HUGE gamut. Metallics. Even flourescents and hot brights.

Silkscreening disadvantages: Printing is long, messy, and time consuming. One color at a time, with all those daily press setups-runs-teardowns, with drying time in between. Your job has to be batched and done at once. Kind of a one-time deal. Thus you are tied to the economics of minimum run lengths. Can't do one at a time.

Silkscreening quality: Superior in color gamut. But resolution thru screen mesh is "medium" at best. But it's exactly the authentic look and feel of your original playfield. Sometimes prone to little physical blemishes here and there, due to the printing process being so physical (dust, dander, hickeys, blobbing, etc). Thus we had to get into grading each individual playfield for final results ("Gold, Silver, Bronze") to separate those little differences.

. . .

Digital advantages: On-demand, one-at-a-time capability. Print a complete full-color finished item in one short session. One item. No minimum run length.

Digital disadvantages: Certain color limitations. You are fixed to the gamut of the printer. There are simply colors that a digital printer cannot hit. Lots of them. But depending on the colors in the artwork at hand, you get usually get most of the colors you want, but only "close" on others.

Digital quality: Superior in resolution - 3X to 10X the resolution of silkscreening. But not every spot color in Pantone can be exactly hit. No blemishes, no grading. Every playfield is essentially "CPR gold".

. . .

KEEP IN MIND: Due to the above strengths & weaknesses, we have deemed plastics & backglasses to be fine and very very acceptable on the digital platform. BUT - going forward we are only using digital for playfields that are a) unobtanium and back-catalog to 2004, re-run on-demand b) boutique short-runs below, say 50 pieces, that otherwise wouldn't get made due to not being conomically justified on a silkscreen run. Digital solves those problems.

CPR is still committed to genuine silkscreening our mainline (full-length) playfield runs/releases. Those colors HAVE TO be fully matched and hit on those mainline products, as people expect that. So since those titles and run sizes are big enough to justify us silkscreening, they will still be produced that way. Nothing changes in the mainline playfield department. Bottom line - We will only digital print playfields IF WE HAVE TO, due to economics.

OK that's easy now. Since Mirco has openly admitted on this thread he has ALL his mainline playfields digital printed (and has been for years), if somebody wants to make an A-B comparison to see Silkscreen vs. Digital on the same title - somebody needs to lay down a Mirco and CPR Addams Family next to each other and compare them. You will see exactly the advantages and disadvantages I outlined above. An easy example would be the hot (dayglo) orange on TAF. CPR hits it, Mirco does not. We're not willing to use a reduced color gamut on our main playfield product lines.

CPR will be using digital on playfields *only as a compromise* in certain situations where titles we couldn't formerly bring to market can't be silkscreened logistically due to small numbers. Not main production. We will not abandon genuine silkscreening and it's supreme color gamut for our ongoing full-length CPR playfield releases.

Remember the announcement, folks. CPR added the digital suite to fix a very big problem we had, that was holding us back - viability to market for short runs, re-runs, custom items, bringing the back-catalog back from the dead, and to create the on-demand model for ongoing plastics and glasses.

It was not to produce our ongoing mainline playfields. You can all rest easy that mainline CPR playfield runs will still be genuine silkscreened.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

We're working closely with Marco Specialties to make this happen very soon. Selling and shipping little parts like coin door inserts is their wheelhouse, not ours. So keep an eye on their stock / offerings in the next month or two. They will be the ones covering the coin door insert market.

Somebody would have to come to us with the completed artwork for Safari playfield/backglass/plastics. I haven't nailed down our rules completely yet, but my idea is to produce that somebody their playfield/backglass/plastics for free - if they allow us to keep their artwork on hand to offer additional production to those who also want the trilogy. We'll put them up for orders. We may get 10 orders, we may get 1, we may get none. That will be our gamble. But you get your set for free - in reward for doing the artwork.

Any Bally/Williams licensing & royalties we would take care of. We are partnered with PPS for that.

Not knocking other manufacturers, simply knocking their choices of titles. New ground should be broken, rather than wasting time re-doing all the groundwork to bring an already-run playfield to market. There are so many playfield titles the hobby wants and needs.

But your point is paramount - an "already-run" CPR playfield (that is sold out and unobtanium) is no good for you, somebody who wants and needs one.

Thus the travesty of our dusty back catalog, going back to 2004. We needed to solve that problem. With all the ongoing NEW un-run playfield run work unchanging, when was there ever going to be a time to shove a playfield re-run (such as Taxi) into our silkscreening queue? And would such a run justify 100 units in order for us to viably silkscreen? These were big questions for us. The longer we dwindle, bootstrapped to silkscreening, the longer those already-run titles become appealing to those who have open production time, and are willing to do small runs. Thus (ie. Mirco) steps in and finds it worth it to commission from scratch. Who wouldn't.

My point being, our back-catalog will now be solved. Opening up the digital suite gives us an additional production line that can take care of all those playfields from now on. Thus they're all coming back for order-taking. There won't be a need for other makers to pick up our slack. We'll have them all covered, and won't need the assistance... my estimate is by probably the end of the year, for all of the "already-run" titles.

Translites per se ... no. We'd be more inclined to make the translite on glass. We just don't really do paper type products. Now if we could source translite (or alternate translite) artwork in proper quality - we would rather produce them on glass panels. Then we've got something we can chew on. That's what we're set up for.

But hey - maybe we can try something new. Trying some paper-type products. The future with the digital suite is wide open. It's a matter of everybody wanting a lot of things, tomorrow, and that is fine. But we've got to take the time to phase-up in our new model, and right now the business at hand is our back-catalog of ~130 plastics sets and backglasses all the way back to 2004.

Yes. Thin floppy stuff. Forgive me, but we simply have no current experience with translites. Personally, the few translites I have experienced in games I have owned are like paper "posters" sandwiched between thin sheets of glass/acrylic.

I'm sure we could do them, and on the correct materials, but we'd need to take them on one-by-one and make sure they are ones that fill a void of what's not already out there. AFAIK vendors often have piles/boxes of translites at shows. Original or repro, I have no idea. Like I said, I haven't paid any attention to the translite market.

Funny you brought those up. JP plastics were just added to the site this morning. They were almost ready for the announcement the other day, but I left them off that wave.

Customize away. If you or anybody orders one, and wants any alterations to colors, just describe your wants in the PayPal comment box.

This will be made clearer on the new web site. But for now, we'll do it this way.

For plastics and glasses - this could/would/should be suitable, as long as the resolution is there, and it IS a true redraw (as much as possible). I don't think anybody wants essentially a non-redrawn "color-copy" of a cleaned-up scan printed to new media. A re-draw does mean a re-draw. The only exception in recent years is trying to get photographic/oil-painting type backglass artwork off a scan of an NOS source. One then kinda has to stick to leaving the main artwork alone, and only deal with redrawing the fresh score windows, fonts, title logo, white layer, lightblock layer, etc. You can't "redraw" the oil painting found on Paragon's glass, for example.

Playfields are another animal - because there needs to be the ability to scale/move things around to fit as perfectly as possible to features on the wood. You can get a $300 Cruze scan of a playfield, off a $500,000 fine art scanner... and use that as a background guide to redraw a whole new art package... but I can tell you, once it's physically printed to say a clear film, and laid down on the physical wood - it's often up to 1/8" too wide, too tall, too short, etc. Then the "tweaking" begins to make it marry to the wood perfectly. Doing small stretches/shrinks to the length. Pulling an insert ring 1/16" to the right. Etc Etc.

There is no utopian system, and a playfield layout does take final verification and tweaking before ever considering the artwork final/usable. I always used the transparency method - printing the artwork to clear film (see-thru) and laying it down on the actual whitewood for analysis. Make your changes. Print another transparency. Lay it down. Check your work. Make more changes and tweaks. Print another transparency. Etc. I got to the point I could do it in two passes. But for somebody starting out, it's likely going to be more.

I fear being bootstrapped to raster for playfields will allow no freedom to grab and move anything around. Crucial for playfields. Which one will find out when they lay down their first transparency of everything they have drawn.

The key for playfields is the artwork must arrive glove-fit and scaled properly.

Backglasses are a rectangle of X by Y in width/height. Way easy. None of the drama or tweaking. Plastics are similar.

...and we will provide those details in due time.

Basically, vectorized redraws, with no layering required (WYSIWYG on your screen) is all I can generally say right now to quickly answer the question. If you're doing that, you're safe, and everything you are doing is controllable/scalable/movable later. That will have most who are "raring to go" guaranteed 95% on the correct path. We can deal with final details later. We're not open for submissions just yet. It was an idea for the future - like the end of the year we should be ready.

Reason being, we're in the midst of one primary thing at this moment - getting those ~130 mothballed CPR plastics and glasses since 2004, all back into availability from the digital suite. That will be a couple more months. After that, we move onto the CPR playfield back-catalog, getting all our sold-out titles available again for on-demand ordering. THEN we can open up for hobby submissions.

The new site will be online in about 3-4 weeks I'd say... it will include the guidelines section for preferred format and considerations.

If anything, that gives those interested a good 5 months to get their ducks in a row. Whether they are stewing on a custom project, or a "D-list" repro project they always wanted to see done. Stuff like that.

We realise many are excited with possibilities. We just don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. Baby steps through our ramp-up process. We have a great deal of work to see completed to get our back-catalog available. That has to come first. Pet projects/ideas later. Hope everybody understands.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Bride of Pinbot playfields have been already been run a couple years ago, and re-running recently, by Peter in Germany:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bop-bride-of-pinbot-playfield-repro-2018-pl-50002

BoP playfields are Peter's tacit 'territory', and he's got all the programming and groundwork already done to run them. So CPR won't be going near that playfield title, unless Peter wants to pass on all his materials to us to continue its legacy. We're not going to duplicate all his hard work in the interim.

We stock all the ready-go insert sets, or we don't list the playfield up for orders. It'll be that simple, really.

** WAVE TWO ** Just released on the site. Next batch of legacy plastics and backglasses brought back from the dead:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cpr-floodgates-open-plastics-amp-glasses-releases/page/3#post-4484246

All of this wave was prompted by suggestions/requests of Pinsiders in this and the other thread, BTW.

Yes. Re-screening services will be open eventually.

We can, but we need a donor of a near-minty specimen, or NOS never-used specimen to master new artwork from.

That goes for any backglass y'all want to see. Otherwise, it's just the occasional glass our Art Director chooses to source, by his choice.

EDIT: By donor, I mean "loan to us, we send it back - with a reward" ... not donor as in "donate it, never get i back"

We're a couple months behind, as mirrored backglass versions are next. But those are going into the pipe in short order. In fact, our first crack at it was the Banai Run mirrored bezel - which is available now. PB glasses are current. Then onto the others, one every couple weeks for the rest of the year.

As for playfields, the count (and backfilling) of insert inventory has been going on since September. The molding factory in Chicago is very very slow to fill orders (3-6 months). A spreadsheet is being built as we speak, which tracks which playfield "recipies" can be made, based on inserts & colors on hand. Once that is up and working, and filled with final data - we will know which titles can be offered first, then others later, etc. Launching the ol' CPR legacy playfield titles will roll out fairly quickly after that.

Hope this helps. Sorry I don't have a better answer.