Finchville, KY
Here's my pass to get into the club...
This is a shattered piece of Invisiglass installed into my Tron. It shattered while installed into the game and nothing hit the glass or otherwise came into contact, as the game had been sitting in the same position for over 3 weeks since its last played game.
Story goes as such:
I had just finished shopping this game and (finally) installed my Eli ramp kit, converted to clear Titan rubbers, installed my art blades, my LE apron and my Pinwoofer kit. Life was GOOD and the game looks, plays and sounds INCREDIBLE.
I finished up the game in my workshop, installed the sheet of Invisiglass (which had never, to my knowledge, been on edge contact of anything other than carpet) and then put the game on the dolly and moved it back into the gameroom to go back in the lineup.
There it sat for ~3 weeks unplayed (as I was moving on to work on my other titles that needed some mods and the Titan treatment) so I figured it was 100% good-to-go and went on about my business. I then went back into the gameroom one night to grab a couple of things, and I walked by the game and didn't immediately realize what had happened, as it took about 15 seconds or so to register and I then spun back around and my heart sank into my gut which sank into my shoes.
I found the game in the above condition and I have absolutely NO idea as to why it happened. The only thing I can think of is that I did have anti-rattle tape installed on the glass sheet (and it does make for a tight fit) and maybe the glass was under some torsional pressure which built over time and eventually caused fatigue, but I've also got that on other games with Invisiglass with no issues (yet).
After some really close inspection, I believe I found the inflection point (circled) where the initial crack happened and it all spread from there -
Screenshot 2020-10-31 150248 (resized).jpg
And then again, maybe I'm just telling myself lies to feel more informed... who knows.
It took me a couple of weeks (at night) to clean up the game, vacuum it out (no less than 15 times), take the ramps back off the playlfield, clean it again from the topside and then drop and disassemble the recognizer disc assembly and drop the leaf switches to clean everything out to ensure that there was no glass left anywhere. Slowly but surely I made progress and now have the game completely back together and I can guarantee that there is not a shard of glass left in it.
That being said, if you are interested in what a busted piece of Invisiglass weighs, I can tell you - it's 14lbs, 8oz:
BagOfInvisiglass (resized).jpg
I do want to give a shout-out to Barry Engler at JJP. I made my original purchase of Invisiglass through JJP a while back and I reached out to him asking if there had been any reports of busted glass from customers around the time I had made my purchase, and of course there was none. Despite that, he helped me out on price and got me into a replacement sheet without it being so overly offensive to my wallet to buy a replacement sheet.
I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with Invisiglass long-term or go the Stern HD glass route or what... going back to regular glass just isn't an option once you've played on the anti-reflective glass for a while, so I'm hoping I just had a run of bad luck or something had happened to this glass prior that either I did without realizing it or otherwise. I've looked for an explanation, but cannot find anything, so I just replace and go forward.
I lament my situation and we discuss glass handling techniques, etc. on ep. 93 of our podcast - http://www.brokentoken.com/podcast-episodes/93-its-not-pretty/ in case anyone is interested in sharing the sorrow with me.
Anyways, thanks for the warm welcome to the club... I hate that I had to join but here I am!
