That's just poor mechanical design having a metal rail tightened against the clear. Bad and inexcusable as this is, I would not lump it in with the current Stern and JJP playfield issues from the digital art/new clear issue. There should be a factory washer, flange or something similar to hold the rail slightly raised. Looking at the nearby post, the clear is just fine; no pooling.

Oh man that sucks!! Sorry to see that on your new game.

Oh no. I'm so sorry. I do not take joy in seeing any manufacturer with problems. I hate it. Makes me really leery to buy any machine at all. :/

Agree, poor design that a simple washer could prevent.

If you look to the left in the image, you can see the clear coat is bunched up. I leveled it using the heat gun.

Thinning the clear coat and removing art around the posts helped, but it has not solved it. Considering where this guide sits, there's no excuse for chipping off after such a short amount of plays. Stern clearly still has improve the adhesion of the paint and hardening of clear coat.

Ad hominem fallacy. Just because you participate and benifit from capitalism, does not mean that it is beyond criticism. This is the equivalent of saying, "you drive a car, so you can't criticize the energy industry." Avoiding senseless divisive arguments makes the world a better place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Yes, "Ergo, Capitalism sucks" was really QUITE the nuanced argument from that gentleman, and it certainly deserved much better than the 'ad hominem fallacy' in response. LOL Let me guess: You're an egghead Liberal who is smarter than we, and you're here to teach us some manners? ...back to playfield quality discussions, I hope.

Are you saying there is a thriving pinball manufacturing base in Venezuala. Or even an arcade?

Didnt think so. Without capitalism, you wont have pinball machines, period. End of discussion.

Well, maybe before they had to burn them for fuel.

It was a valiant effort but when people try to use capitalisms and political propaganda to win pinball arguments, the bar of stupid is just too low, sometimes you just have to walk away.

I am so scared to take my ball guides off my JP premium. Probably looks just like that. F@ck nib
My consumer confidence is f$cking gone.

WhoDey would agree!

Long live Who-Dey!

GnR-1 (resized).jpg

So the washer makes it worse :-/

Where can I get some of these fiber washers? I simply can't see taking all the stuff off that's necessary to fully remove those JP rails. The whole tower has to come off and more. Good news, the rail sprung up with no further damage.

Lol, thanks for doubling down. You and the political guy should go sport hunt some endangered species or something.

"The political guy" "sport hunt some endangered species or something". You GOT me! Oh, please stop! My sides are splitting! I can see why your unmatched wit needed the little 'laughing guy' emoji at the end...simply HILARIOUS!

OK, now that I've addressed "The Lecturing, Funny-guy", again, maybe we can get the thread back on track.

Home Depot. They were in the fastener aisle in a drawer of special washers.
https://www.homedepot.com/b/Hardware/Fiber-Washer/N-5yc1vZc21mZ1z0ztch

Drop politics and claim that we need to get back on topic, all in the same post. Who's the hilarious one?

No, Playing it does

Mirco will bury JJP. They need to get someone else fast.

I think that is being a little extreme considering they have orders out until late spring at this point. Also, the average buyer has no clue what pooling is and probably wouldn't give a crap if you pointed it out. Even the chipping and art separation in most cases you have to remove a post just to see. Yeah this is a bad problem and after three games in a row, it is basically inexcusable. Still it is nothing that stops people from playing and enjoying the game in any way unless they let it bother them.

You're just making statements to fit your narrative. Assuming a non pinsider "wouldnt give a crap" about playfield chipping is pretty naive.

When I got an iron man back when they first came out, my playfield chipped. Never knew about it from anywhere and anyone. I was pissed. I didn't need a website to tell me how pissed I was about it.

Sadly, they are just gambling at this point. They're hoping that enough good playfield will outweigh the bad ones. It kinda reminds me of that line from fight club about the main character that works for the car company. He said something along the lines of, "if the amount of lawsuits from faulty cars and deaths caused by them don't outweigh the amount to fix the problem, they won't do it." So, they're just playing the odds. Which really pisses me off, but that's business, I guess.

Who Dey would approve this message. This is not good for them. I was possibly going to buy my first JJP, but I wanted an LE. If my game started chipping or peeling away at the slings like that I’d be very unhappy then beat myself up for spending money on it. I don’t want these guys to fail. Same goes for Stern. The lack of customer support for these issues blows my mind. I am calling my distributor today about Sterns silence on my JP. Hell you can’t even call Stern tech support anymore which is BS. Has nothing to do with covid19 lol. Probably too many will call about their playfields so they shut it down.

Well said, his last post in this thread.

indeed and this is why I wanted to understand more about the problem on my TNA - what is clear is that when the clear coat starts to fail, it continues to fail. Much like when paint chips on car the surrounding paint starts to go. The pinball industry needs to solve this and solve it quickly.

Its not a fix for the playfield issues but see how Williams (CGC) have the rails mounted off the playfield.

IMG_1156 (resized).JPG

It's too bad. I was going to order a SE for my route and maybe a LE for myself, but I can't justify spending that much money if it's a gamble on if it's going to be a faulty product right out of the box. It's a shame, Eric created a masterpiece only to be tainted by QC issues.

Similar - but not really part of the solution. I think that was just more about letting light through and materials. They don't do this all the way to the ends, etc.

Don’t CGC screen print their playfields?
If so then that would seem to be the one difference between CGC and Stern/JJP who are having these pooling issues, which seems to be the art lifting/moving under the clear.

Edit: I haven’t seen a CGC with pooling or art chipping so if that’s has happened, my mistake.

The issue was with first batch playfields I think issues have been resolved.

Why was it not resolved 3 machines ago when there was issues with Pirates?

That change would cost Stern another $1 per game due to the extra metal needed! I don't know how they could afford it only charging $6k - $9k+ for their products.

Ridiculous. Those raised rails should be standard on all pins. There's now been dozens of reports of chipping near the edge of rails on Stern games as the ends dig into the playfield.

Really? Are you sure about that?

Nothing is 100% but there’s a high probability the majority of the original and the coming playfields will be solid.I went through this with Wonka the hard way,fortunately my issue were resolved and I think JJP addressed situation very aggressively.

How could there be issues with the first batch when all had been resolved last Oct

"New JJP playfields are looking good since October builds"

"It seems that way I don’t see any second run Wonka owners complaining like the poor Stern folks are"

"Safe build dates October 2019"

"When JJP had issues with the first run of Wonka’s that shut down production!They fixed the issues and restarted production and me and as far as I know other owners have been very pleased with the latest run.No pooling no chipping no ghosting Problem solved"

All quotes courtesy of romulusx

And my statements were accurate the few Wonka’s that were defective later on were proven to be earlier machines that some distributors had been sitting on due to poor sales.

Bear stew is delicious!!!

When I contacted Mirco at the start of this he said a “handful of playfields” made at the start of 2020 were at fault

Someone earlier said screen printing is now too expensive and time consuming.

What makes it more expensive and time consuming now compared to the 90s when they were doing some runs of over 15,000 and games cost $3000?

To add to that, I'm not sure if R&M is screen printed or not, but they don't seem to have these problems.

This^^^^^^^^

Remember there were pooling issues with TNA at one time but Charlie kicked them in the ass and straighten out the problem

It wasn't so much pooling, but a machining error of the post holes that caused the problem I was told. And yes, he kicked it in the ass promptly as soon as they figured out what it was.

So why the need for washers, after the handful?

I have a chip in the same area down to wood. Also both guides for Thor. One is chipped on the inside just partially visible in the photo most of the paint fleck I found there must be under the guide itself, another bubbled on outside guide, which I wonder if it the paint will chip right off when I go to raise that guide some..

20201102_172614 (resized).jpg20201102_172657 (resized).jpg

Based on what, exactly? Hopes and prayers?

The complete lack of transparency and communication on these issues from JJP and Stern just adds gasoline to the fire. As history as shown, these issues come and go from one day to the next. There is no such thing as "fixed".

Until such time that Stern and JJP explain exactly what causes the issue, and exactly what they are doing to alleviate it they won't get my trust. They blew their "benefit-of-the-doubt" years ago on these issues.

Hard not to agree with you....its also hard to understand why after almost 5 weeks JJP can't provide an estimated delivery date on your machine

Who needs transparency when this thread is now a year old?

Apparently this didn't stop people throwing 10s of 1000s of dollars at them to get a new amusement device with the theme of their dreams.

But, let the playfield issues and complaining continue...

So the mods should be changing the thread title to just Stern pretty soon then?

Is that first picture of the chip visible when you are in playing position? Or is it hidden?

Why take a chance on lifting that guide and having it flake off? Why not just leave it? Are you worried the ball running up the rail will cause it to chip off?

Wanting something fixed doesn't make it magically happen. Who knows how many fixes have been tried. If I was Mirco, I'd be running a bunch of experiments at the same time, given how long it seems to take for playfields to cure and show the problem.

Edit: Unless he's already solved the problem.

Ok