It's called "wood"

No.

How does a layer of paint dent wood?

Don't look any different to any playfield I have seen.

No.

rd

My Lotr LE had the best PF I've owned by far. Why? Who knows.

It looked nearly the same when I sold it as the day it came out of the box.

Thought the same thing, how did that magnet get like that?

Soft metal.

Same as how the old cores used to mushroom out. Metal is too soft.

RD always recommends "heavy metal".

rd

Date is Dec 2 2016. I understand that the playfield will even out a little over time but these are not small marks and the distance some of them are from the spots a ball typically jumps means they won't be getting hit often. It is hard to capture in the pics but there are a ton. The way the ball flys up and hits the glass and ramps off the magnet is definitely part of the problem.

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Yep. Soft metal and soft wood.... and an unusual amount of high velocity air balls.

Well...

Location in Dallas, TX has a Premium on location. Played 5 games. ~900 million was my best score.

Oh yeah...and 20 cents a play. LAWLZ.

I don't believe anything is clearcoated other than the wood.
It is the wood that is dimpling as well as the metal of the magnet core.
The positive in the dimpling is no signs of clearcoat chipping or insert ghosting (fingers crossed).

The magnet is not cleared. That is the soft metal dimpling as others have mentioned. Is everyone seeing the same amount of crazy bounces off the magnet hitting the ramps and glass?

Yep, my 1st Tron NIB was the same way.

We had a bunch of balls flying off the back of the left ramp's wire form. Did you see that too? Often these balls would get stuck on top of the spinning disc and a ball search would clear it. Problem is the ball search spins the disc and it will dump all your balls locked for multiball back onto the playfield but the game doesn't know it happens so the first ball you drain ends your ball. Then your next ball will always eject multiple balls into shooter lane. So weird.

Nice score btw. Guy playing earlier today got score #1 st 500M

Poorly worded on my part. Meant to ask if the dimple was actually occurring in a thick layer of the coating. I'm probably thinking the coating is thicker than it is. Thanks for your warm responses though

This is an urban myth that stern started to tell people. I believed it on my Star Trk. I have owned two a premium in 2014 thinking they fixed it but it looked just like my LE did. I have seen it on all sterns since then along with the insert issues. Dimpling never goes away or evens out. None of the old games have it. The MMR le, hobbit or woz have it. Stern is using softer wood. The grain is wider suggesting more fertizlers. My GBLE you can see the grain of the wood through the paint. It came that way. Almost looks like planking. Something is going on but don't think it evens out it just looks like the moon more everyday. I am not sure who is supplying playfeilds now to them or if they are doing in house. Many rumors. I was hoping on batman 66 they fixed this.

I've made 400 million so far...magnet did get some dimples, and a few on the playfield, but nothing unusual ( thought it was odd on the magnet, but it's in a pretty volatile spot). Very few air balls though.....

Only thing I see of any concern is the ball search dumping your locked balls, and the game doesn't know how to recover properly. Quite sure this gets fixed in codeland , as many machines ( WOZ and TZ come immediately to mind) that keeps " virtual " count of your multiballs, then just launches required amount from trough when multiball mode achieved. I'm not worried about that.

Pitching the game up a bit kept the balls on the left ramp ALOT more than down at 6.5...suspect some tweaking there...still really love the game.

And I'll only reference once..comparison of BM vs AS LCD: I'll take TV footage all day over cartoon likeness, Lyman will make this thing amazing, and no way is it inferior to the MET style art LCD cartoony look. BM is a classic...freakin love it in this Dept. The tweaks will be dealt with...

I'm in the camp that dimpling happens quite a bit on new playfields BUT not all of them. I believe it's as simple as: a hard steel ball, running and bouncing on top of soft wood and fresh clear coat - steel ball wins. BUT ... I have an MMR LE and it has zero dimples and hundreds of games. My GBLE that I purchased around the same time has hundreds of dimples. Now GB LE throws the ball around pretty violently so that certainly adds to the opportunity to dimple.

It is ALSO true that playfields with thousands of plays can and do "even out". I restored my own Bride of Pinbot playfield and it is now mirror flat without a single dimple. This is because it was played perhaps 10's of thousands of plays before I bought it and restored it. It will never dimple again as the wood is 100% compressed.

One way to reduce the chance of dimpling is to add a playfield protector. There are folks in Germany that sell templates and I have one of theirs and it's nice and works well. But, no one has one made for BM66 yet so ...

I made my own this evening before I put a single game on my new BM66SLE. The thread link follows. Parts and supplies are cheap. Does take a few hours though and some patience. Probably would not bother at this point if your PF has dimples. Like my GBLE, the more I play, the less I see them as they begin to blend together and eventually almost disappear.

Link to thread and more pics ...

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/batman-66-official-club-thread/page/7#post-3527141

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I got the playfeild protector on my GBLE before one game was played. I have compared to others with tons of dimples and my protector looks like it is doing the job. You should be happy and great pics. What material did you use. My mmr Le is like yours, a lot of games no dimples. All my old games no dimples. I really think the wood and magnet metal is softer in Stern's new games. None of my other magnets dimpled just the newer games. Your Batman looks great!

I've never had a single airball on my LE.

I don't know if dimpling is normal or not. I'm not saying is or isn't, I'm saying I don't know. My TWD and my GOT both are dimpled pretty damn bad but they have smoothed out somewhat after lots of plays. Now the playfields just kinda looks like an orange peel now. My take on it is, you can't see it unless the light is shined at a perfect angle and you are bending down looking for it, I highly doubt anybody is going to come to your house and do that anyway. The playfield looks beautiful unless like I said you are at a perfect angle with perfect lighting reflections so I'm not worried in the least about it. This is also coming from a guy that is extremely picky about my machines to the point that I kind of drive myself nuts.

I say play your machine and enjoy it and don't worry about the dimples, you won't even notice them before long and your playfield is going to hold up just fine also. It's kinda like when you get a new car, you go over it with a fine tooth comb looking for any flaws at first. My TWD and GOT look gorgeous, dimples and all and I'm super proud of them!

B/W playfields got dimpled to heck also depending on the game. Here is a shot of my AFM after thousands of plays. This was an original PF not a repro. Its highly exaggerated in this photo as it all depends on the angle and how the light is hitting it. NEVER an issue with any clear coming off or chipping.

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That's what I've been trying to tell you and the others who say it's normal and will even out. There are "dimples" and there are "pits". Stern playfields have been relatively inconsistant about this...but "pitting" will NOT even out. Again - I just saw a TWD LE on location that looked like horribly lumpy clay. That is NOT evening out. Most of my games have dimples if I go looking for them. From the player perspective you don't really notice them... if I shine my gameroom lights bright and look at the right angles - I can see them. Those are acceptable "dimples", IMO...but "pits" that you can just see under normal circumstances - NOT GOOD and won't get better.

Forget the wood PF... you must be having some SERIOUS airballs because even the metal magnet is already all chewed up. Now these things are soft metal and will eventually get some marks but that is ridiculous.

As an example...my March 2016 TWD Prem has two of those magnets and both are still relatively mark-free.

Somehow even your magnet has fairly deep and noticeable divots. The magnets are not cleared but are pretty resilient overall to marks and dimpling. Your magnet shouldn't look like that for a loooong time.

So it's not the wood PF's fault or the clear...it has to be some extremely hard hits from airballs doing this damage.

yes they should! - I'm up for a order of cliffys - btw I'm heading to the US in a couple of weeks so will get some stuff delivered locally and bring back to save on shipping costs.

Cheers,
Neil.

No offense but I find this hard to believe. Even if you angle and bulletproof the targets to prevent airballs the trolls WILL occasionally pop up with a ball on them and that slams the ball up against the glass and back down hard on the PF. That alone would HAVE to leave some dimples unless your game has magic wood. (or REALLY slow-rising troll assemblies).

Kudos for keeping the game in shape but once again... with the troll issue I don't see how the PF could have "zero dimples". Makes no sense to me.

Anybody hear anything on the new batman code? I know I'm dead flip Gomez said new code on Tuesday and still there is nothing posted?

Assuming that starts next Tuesday since a lot of key Stern staff are at CES.

I know that dimples can be made to look much worse by taking photos with specific glare and light reflections on the playfield. Not dismissing the complaint for sure, but seeing similar dimples on the magnet was strange.

I have had a few attacks from mars. The one I clear coated had issues with fish eyeing. All others nothing. In the picture it looks clear-coated and different than mine. It is a good topic for discussion.

Yes, airballs off the left ramp were a LOT. That protector is not sufficient IMO. Stern needs to make the entrances to these shots fully enclosed wireforms IMO. The half-arsed approach with it being a bottom rail and two sides is not cutting it.

jesus christ how thick do you think clear is that it can dimple and not make the wood under it also dimple??

The TWD LE that I saw with the horribly lumpy playfield also had lumpy magnets as well. I thought it was odd.

Pretty much all newer Sterns suffer horribly from dimpling, it's not something that's just started to occur since they switched from Churchill as sole supplier.

My ST Premium is heavily dimpled, AC/DC to a slightly lesser extent. All examples of these or other same era games are the same, that I've seen.

In contrast, none of my BW or DE games are dimpled. Nor are my Mirco playfields (Funhouse repro and WOZ). The B&T Automaten BoP repros that I've seen have not been dimpled either.

My Tron, Iron Man, AC/DC, and Spider-Man never dimpled anywhere near as bad as this Batman SLE is showing or nearly as bad as my GBLE has across the first few hundred plays. Yes, some amount of dimpling is normal and can't be avoided. And yes, that level of dimpling will even out. But with some of the "dimples" I have on my GBLE, there's no way it will even out to that depth. The newer Sterns are different in a very big way and the dimpling is far worse.

This is crazy. Apologists need to back off, because they're going to delay this problem from being properly addressed.

I'm sure it is worse. The wood on the 'Fun' pfs is softer still than the Churchill ones, and no doubt the clearing process less thorough, too.

In partially going back to Churchill, they've probably asked for a cheaper product than they were using before the schism ... so ... no end in sight, I suspect.

Here's an example of "acceptable dimpling". You pretty much can't see them unless you're really searching for them under bright lights. Here's a pic of Iron Man Vault, "normal point of view" and some dimples that I'm really trying hard to photograph but you can still barely see them.

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Strange really as I have heard all the arguments regarding dimpling even out over time.

I remember my 2003 LOTR that had a few 100 plays on it.

Just no dimples. Well, nothing noticeable anyway.

Suspect wood has too much moisture in it maybe in these latest games.

2014 was a good year for dimples.

When I had WOF and BDK, they were the most perfect "sheet of glass" playfields I'd ever seen from Stern. You could throw a ball at them and they wouldn't dimple. Avatar LE was spectacular too, but that had been advertised as having extra clear.

Again we are new collectors and do not have a long history of owning games. Also I am not freaking out and know that being an early buyer always is a little risky. But I definitely and not making the dimples worse with the angles. If anything I am having a hard time capturing just how bad it is due to the lighting. I am fairly handily and mechnically inclined and I will assure you these are not going to evenly level out over a reasonable time. Maybe if my family, and their descendants, work shifts around the clock playing it the area right in front of the magnet would somewhat even out before the sun eventually consumes the earth. But the stray dimples that are collecting in front of the crane and other areas there is no way. The magnet should not be that soft in such a high impact area.

I've reached out to Stern by email but have not heard back yet.

I don't understand how Stern using softer wood also explains that magnets being dimpled. That is weird.

I'm in the don't care about dimples camp. I don't see ever being able to wear out my Huo pins.

If I do, that's what micro is for. Problem solved. Less stress that way!

If you think Stern is going to answer dimpling issues when they are having to deal with PF clear defects, serious issues, then you might be disappointed

Did you use the stock balls that came with the game? Do they look weird at all?

You start selling pinball machines that are within a couple of grand of a brand new Chevrolet, you need to answer questions about issues whether perceived or not....

I'm calling BS. I have micro fields, they dimple. I have un-restored B/W games, they have dimples. The heavier the use the less its noticed for the already noted reasons. The newer home used sterns are in better lighting then the routed games and are played way less then a routed game ever was. They don't get beat flat and the better home lighting makes the dimples easier to see. If the ball goes airborne the field will dimple, not maybe, it *will*.

You should make that a requirement of their inheritance.

No question dimples suck and it seems no one can answer why some playfields dimple more than others. If they knew the answer I guess they could fix it, but looks like they don't and they can't.

You are correct it is a "myth" they never even out. It is different wood or process.

I suppose it's possible "playfields aren't made like they used to" or whatever argument you want about softer woods, etc. There are two explanations and they're not mutually exclusive: the playfields are different materially, or the game is different. The major cause, I believe, is the latter. Most modern games seem to play much faster, more prone to airballs as a result, have more multiballs on average, more targets/stuff to do. The result is more dimpling.

Perhaps better QC and engineering would help. But even if the playfield is solid oak, it will still dimple if the gameplay is frantic. I did a quick test -- excuse the poor quality. I have a solid door that I use as a work bench -- I thought it was oak, but I'm not sure and I've had it 30 years; it weighs a ton. I dropped a pinball from 3 inches. You can see the dimple. I'm not saying this explains everything, but I've come to accept that playing pinball is like being a car collector living on gravel roads. If you drive them, they're going to get dinged up.

Edit: one last thing -- I think 'auto playing' pinball machines are great to test overall resiliency. But this might not simulate real world gameplay that would result in more airballs, multiballs, etc.

Before

After

Why are the JJP or the Chicago gaming games not doing its ? My Woz LE and Star Trek are the same build month and played the same. The Star Trek looks like the moon.

I do not really see how a playfield that is dimpling very easily caused by flyers coming off the magnet isn't as serious an issue as ghosting or other playfield defect. This game also costs substantially more than others Stern has produced in the past. Again I am not bashing the game we like it. Obviously we were excited to get it and paid well for it. Of course a game is going to show wear over time but for this to happen on the first day is concerning.

I am using the stock pinballs that came with the game and they were not damaged at all. Wiped them down before putting them in the game.