Quoted from Who-Dey:

Just because they dont have clearcoat chipping off of them doesn't mean that they are good quality.

Quoted from gblack:

Just because yours is perfect doesn’t mean another in the same time frame is perfect. Mine was made in March and has raised inserts. I know they are raised because I can feel them, see them, and a level isn’t flat across them. I know this isn’t correct because other manufacturers can make a flat surface with inserts..

Quoted from cpr9999:

This is why Stern keeps pumping out the current quality level - people keep buying regardless.

Quoted from Who-Dey:

He joined Pinside three weeks ago and hes already a playfield expert. Lol

Quoted from Who-Dey:

If you don't think that raised inserts is a problem on a pinball machine playfield i want some of what you are smoking.<

If you don't think that raised inserts is a problem on a pinball machine playfield i want some of what you are smoking.

Quoted from luckymoey:

If you can feel the raised insert that’s all you need to know. It will affect play and wear quicker over time - potentially compounded by thinner clear.
If you’re buying machines as a typical home consumable / toy then fine, but some of us like being stewards of a “commercial quality” collectible as Stern advertises - or at least use to until recently.

Quoted from luckymoey:

Never said they should be cosmetically "perfect," that Stern pins are not reliable, or that dimples are a big deal. Raised inserts, pooling and chipping are performance and durability not cosmetic issues. And Stern has said over-and-over that premiums & LE's are targeted at the home collector not location market.
Stern obviously has plenty of buyers, but I think they're leaving money on the table by not improving playfield and cabinet quality. I use to buy most premiums or LE's new or lightly used but have taken a pause and bought Heist and Hot Wheels instead. Spike, LCD, metal backbox, etc are all innovations, but changes in the cabinet and playfield are just cost reductions - and I'm not talking about dimple-gate.

Quoted from seenev:

If it didn't matter you wouldn't hear so many people saying "I just put Mylar down day one." Even if you personally don't care, it wrecks the value of your game. The next guy will care, and will pay less for it.

Quoted from Who-Dey:

Or maybe lose a sale totally because people dont like a game that shows wear. Should at least put some removable mylar down in any known wear areas. It just takes a minute and it helps a lot.

Quoted from Who-Dey:

I'm not trying to argue with you, just trying to help you. The point I'm trying to make is I would pass on your game that has wear in key areas because I am pretty picky. I would rather buy one from a seller that has taken better care of his game even if it's 500 more dollars.
You have the right to do whatever you want to your games because they are yours and if you are doing well financially and dont care about having to sell your game below market value then by all means dont protect your games.

Quoted from seenev:

Probably the same ones that tell you that dimpling has always been normal and that it will even out over time. I don't typically complain about dimpling because it always happens to some degree, but Stern machines seem to have it the worst by far, and I've never seen it even out. It only gets worse over time.

Quoted from seenev:

I had also put a metal protector plate in my shooter lane on my JP and I also got chipping, and in way less than 600 plays. The quality is so bad now that you can make light use of it and try to be proactive about protecting it and it still falls apart.

Quoted from Multiballmaniac1:

More pooling found. JP Premium. June build.
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Quoted from Who-Dey:

Well you're a noob to the hobby so maybe that's why you havent seen pooling like that.

Quoted from snaroff:

Can't believe I've made 101 posts to this long running, very redundant topic.
Today, I received a CPR repro PF for "Paragon" (after waiting 5 1/2 years after signing up for it.
Was a huge reminder of the artistry and quality produced by Stu and the CPR team. They didn't release it until it was "just right".
Too bad Stern is unwilling to spend an extra $50-$100 for better PF plywood (would solve many problems...warping, graining, cratering). I bet if they offered CPR quality plywood as a $200 upgrade on a Premium/LE, most people would opt-in just to make sure they didn't have to deal with all the BS in this topic!
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Quoted from PanzerFreak:

This is a long but informative post from Mike at CPR about the type of wood used at CPR and other manufacturers. This may be why modern Stern's are dimpling more severely and having more quality issues (chipping) than games made 20 years ago.
Just think about it. Stern has raised prices for years, quality has gone down, and yet for around $50 (or less) per game they could make a playfield at CPR's level of quality. It's disappointing and is complete BS considering today's prices.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cpr-playfield-preorders-are-meaningless?tq=&tu=CPR
"Guys;
I have to jump in here as well, on four issues. The first was the Xenon PFs that we ran out of last year. The Xenon's I cut were in no way shape or form ever going to satisfy the entire interest but at the time I had the wood and inserts for a very limited number of PFs. I decided that rather than idle the CNC and layoff the guys it made more since to actually make the PFs I had materials for at the time. The rest of the material had been ordered but the lead times on our materials can be HUGE! It just made since to keep everyone employed and the machines working while new supplies were on route.
The second point I have to comment on is our wood. I absolutely believe that our wood is by FAR the best in the world. We have had many suppliers over the years and in bad times have been forced to use the same wood as the other PF manufacturer uses all the time and let me tell you that doing so is our last resort. Playfield wood over the decades has often been whatever was available to the manufacturers. Many PFs especially in the 70s and 80s PFs used three layers of thick cheap filler wood with two thin layers of maple on the faces, something you could buy at your local building supply only with thicker face veneers. For decades most of the better playfield wood came from North American Plywood near Chicago. It used sweet gum as its filler cores and .040" face veneers. But in 2008 in the downturn they liquidated their custom plywood mill and everyone was scrambling to find wood, even Stern. We then shifted to Marion Plywood from Wisconsin who made two very good orders for us before they shifted their glues to a more green product that warped like crazy. We even tried a Russian Baltic Birch that had custom maple veneers glued to it. It was expensive and unsuitable for several reasons. Finally, the current supplier for Stern contacted us and offered to make our wood. This was several years ago now and we couldn't have been happier as they work directly with us to produce the very best CUSTOM wood you can buy ANYWHERE! Their standard wood for Stern is a good one side panel with 3 layers of white ash and a 0.048" face veneers. After many consultations with their tech guys we came up with what I know is the best playfield wood in the world. We use the same basic setup as Stern, 3 layers of white ash cores then we use 4 layers of maritime hard maple BUT we increased the thickness of the two face veneers by 64% to get a nominal face thickness of 0.075". These huge and thick ONE piece veneers are crazy expensive and we always get this top grade veneer on BOTH sides of your PF. This alone added $12 to the cost of each panel vs just using a second grade veneer on the bottom like Stern does. There's nothing wrong with the way Stern does it, as they just refuse any board they want and since they are so close to the mill, the mill just picks it up with the next load and credits them. We however are a $4000 freight bill away so that won't work. We pay a lot extra to get the very best wood they can produce right off the start. You get a much nicer product and a much denser and tougher PF. This wood is 25% heavier for the same size panel as our old wood and nearly a third heavier as Baltic Birch which some other playfield manufacturers use. I would love to use cheaper wood like some others do, after all why would I pay $12.50/sqft landed when I can get birch at less than $2.00sqft? We use the best densest hardest custom wood we can get because we think its worth it and we always try to make the very best product we can.
There are other point is that we intentionally make three levels of quality. Wow, really? We always try to make perfect playfields, every single time but in the past we ALWAYS did full spot color silkscreens which meant that each and every color layer is individually vectored with trapping layers built and silk screened one color at a time, one on top of the other. 14 colors means 14 trips through the screen press. 14! Even the slightest misalignment in any single layer of the normal 12-14 color process means the final product isn't a gold anymore. Its wood, a living surface so if the ink doesn't lay down into every nook and cranny of every square mm of the grain then its not a gold. If a single piece of dust get in the screen and makes its way into the print which is very hard to prevent then its really not a gold anymore. To screen press a playfield we could never do more than about 1 color a day just due to the logistics of cleaning the ink you just used out of the screen trying to save what you can, then removing the screen and washing it with cleaner and paper towels, then once the ink is out, rinsing and then using a stripper to remove the image from the screen, then rinsing, then bleaching the screen to remove all traces of the previous image, rinsing, then drying the screen. Then you have to coat the screen with a photosensitive liquid and let that dry. Then you lay on your full size and expensive direct contact positive and expose the whole thing to a powerful UV light, then immediately wash the screen once more to expose the image which means a third drying of the screen! Then mount it and align it precisely to the previous image on the screen press, which always involves a few trial and error hits on test prints. Add in a cleaned and sharpened squeegee and print your single color...... now repeat this process for each and every color on the playfield. Any misalignment at all, even as small as 1/64"in ANY layer and you may not have a gold, any mark from handing and small dropout of ink, and deep grain that the ink didn't get to and you may not have a gold anymore. Screen printing is many many times harder to do than printing it digitally. Producing artwork for screen printing is horrendously more difficult than prepping something for a digital print. We are very lucky that we have years worth of vectored artwork that can fairly easily be converted for digital use to be used on our big flatbed but you can't go the other way. If you printed 100 PFs and have 10 that are not perfect you had no choice but to sell them, hence silvers and bronze. It could take you as long as 2 weeks to reprint those 10 PFs. Now if you are doing these on a digital printer you have eliminated ANY chance of a misalignment because its a single flat image not 12-14 images laid on top of one another, the printer is spraying, so surface imperfections are easily covered and there is no screen to get contaminated. So for screen printing, since the artwork is many times more complex in comparison and the printing method is many times more complex its no wonder that we didn't always get 100% gold. Of course if you have something go sideways on a digital print it takes but minutes to sand the ink off and clean it up and run it through the printer once again, $8 in inks costs versus basically spending two weeks trying to rescreen a few seconds. But now that we have the same tech as others we can also fairly easily reprint an error so there will be much fewer silver and bronzes in our future.
Making the right number of PFs for everyone is more art than anything else. Playfields are crazy expensive to make and the production costs are all up front. In some cases royalties and licensing alone can cost as high as 25% of the full retail value of the PF, do some quick math and figure out the size of the check you'd have to write to cover that on 100 pfs!! Inserts can cost $25-$100 per PF due to minimum requirements of the molders. You can figure out our wood costs from above. Add in the costs of 2 CNCs, 2 laser cutters, a silk screen operation, a huge UV flatbed etc.... now figure that 50% of the guys who signed up don't buy!! In the case of Corvette PFs we had 75% of people who signed up didn't purchase as they promised! Have two or three of these happen in a row and anyone would become gun shy real quick or we risk losing our homes! I tried deposits when I first started this and it was a nightmare, lately we have on rare occasions used them again with much more success so maybe that's a possibility but truthfully making smaller numbers is the safest thing to do. Using the digital system instead of silk screening makes much more sense and having the ability to digitally reprint our screen printed seconds may get rid of them almost entirely.
Making PFs is complex, silk screening playfields is stoopid complex and expensive in the very small numbers we make but we do it because we love it.

Quoted from snaroff:

CPR and Stern DO NOT use the same PF supplier. That is absurd.

Thx. For now, it's game room art. One day, I might swap the PF in my Paragon. Problem is, my Paragon is a HUO beauty. The only issue is minor insert cupping (which happens on all of them, for some reason).

Quoted from snaroff:

I didn't answer your 2nd question because your 1st question was so ridiculous. If you insist on getting an answer to your 2nd question...here it is:
Of course it's conceivable that CPR could be getting wood from the same mill that Stern uses, but they don't. CPR is based in Canada, where they manufacture their PF's.

Quoted from snaroff:

I know...I just hate when people spread mis-information. CPR is a very small business that focused on PF quality. The effort to produce the Paragon PF was significant...and even though it was painful to wait 5.5 years for it, I appreciate the stunning result.
Stern is all about quantity, cost reduction and cranking PF's out as fast as possible (which is what explains many of the gripes throughout this topic).

Quoted from cconway84:

I got a NIB CGC AFM SE yesterday. Opened it up and immediately saw a flaw in the paint at the three bank motorized target area by the saucer. It looks like it was touched up poorly by hand then cleared. Feels smooth so definitely under the clear.
Saucer also has a chip in the front like from a ball hit. New in box game with 0 plays.
What would be a reasonable expectation for addressing these issues?
[quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image]

Quoted from tp:

Have a chance to pick up a nib gnr standard today. Want it bad, but I'm not a fan of gambling. How bad of a gamble is it with the se?

Quoted from amxfc3s:

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Quoted from JohnTTwo:

Whats the best way to handle a chipped playfield under warranty?
One small chip no pooling.
Get loud act out, or be polite and professional?

Quoted from JohnTTwo:

Thanks it is a JJP CE machine.
I should have said that in my post, seems JJP has great customer service so I was wondering what they will do?

Quoted from gliebig:

Why would a replacement playfield be any different quality? Probably wind up going through a shit-ton of work just to have it shit the bed again.

Quoted from Spyderturbo007:

I've been fighting with my distributor for almost 2 years and haven't gotten anywhere. I told them about the issue about 45 days after receiving the game. It's always "I'll check with Stern and get back to you". Then I wait a few weeks, email them again and I get the "I'll check with Stern and let you know".
I'm really pissed off and half tempted to throw them under the bus because they appear to have hung me out to dry. I've bought 3 games from them and would have bought a JP Premium shortly after they were released, but since no one has stepped up to fix my issue, I'm not buying shit.

Quoted from Multiballmaniac1:

My John Deere lawn tractor blew some smoke after mowing yard last night. It’s brand new with 5 hrs on it.
I paid 2600 bucks for it. The dealer is coming to look at it at my house and fix/diagnose the issue. If the have to take it then it’ll be a few days before returning. Now that’s a warranty. My wife was laughing because it’s taken Stern 8 months now to get my replacement playfield for Jurassic and that cost 7500. What a joke these pinball manufacturers are. They have the best customers though. Pay through the roof for a non existing warranty and sub par service. Distributors just lay back and take the cash and say sorry. I am glad I finally learned to just buy second hand and only rotate a game in my four game collection every other year.

Quoted from Bublehead:

When I first heard they were Doing DTS printing for Playfields, I though, Hmm... what a novel idea. If it works, it could revolutionize playfield production by:
-allowing for remakes easily,
-would really speed up the playfield pipeline,
-eliminate the drawbacks of screen printing,
-remove the whole process of developing and using all the different inks and paints and dyes,
-the necessity of determining optimum color trapping, layer order, cure times, etc...
-reduction of registration to a single, one shot mechanical centering on the printer...
All kinds of benefits. Then the ugly truth raised its head and we find the artwork is actually a thin film web itself, and when it receives MASSIVE side loaded forces, tears away from the substrate and surrounding artwork, and forms a sub clear void or bubble.
Then the CC hardens at the edges of the bubble, there is nothing keeping it from receiving additional MASSIVE side forces which causes buckling and the brittle CC starts to crack and break free... and a Chip is born.
The reason removing the artwork has worked for Stern is the bare wood below the posts gets the initial clear prep layer, but no thin film color layer is there to detach and start a chip.
So the problem is the DTS thin film color layer and its ability to maintain adhesion even though the post is imparting massive side loads to a major area of the thin film color web.
HEP's solution to use smaller washers means there is less color film layer exposed to the side forces, so even if the artwork lets go, the small footprint is still hidden by the larger post or washer above it.
It all comes back to the de-lamination of the thin film color layer from the substrate due to huge side forces. So like vid1900 said, this ain't changing until they change the DTS printing process which means dumping Mirco.
The problem is, the solution is not economical if they are to maintain the production rates that Miro's process has got them addicted to... CGC learned that lesson on MB with the delays their screen printing process added to its delivery schedule.

Quoted from Haymaker:

That's a bad analogy for 2 reasons.
#1 the paint on a mower is not of equal importance to the "paint" on a playfield. The playfield is as important as the engine is on a mower imo
#2 if the paint on JD mowers suddebly started flaking off in giant chunks within weeks or months of ownership they most likely would do something about it. That's a glaring issue.

Quoted from Doctor6:

Because the playfield to pinball is the monitor to an arcade game. Yes, burn in doesnt hurt a video game, but boy oh boy does it look like shit. 100 times out of 100 will I play on a game with a non blown out playfield over the same game that has a trashed one. Same for the arcade analogy.

Quoted from Palmer:

He is talking about monitor burn in. You can still play the game, it just doesn't look as good.

Quoted from smalltownguy2:

You are missing the point entirely. Stop talking, please.

Quoted from Bublehead:

The big elephant in the room is the aftermarket perceived value. What I keep hearing on all these threads, not just JJP or Stern, or CGC, or etc., it doesn't matter which manufacturer, but people are buying the games playing them, then when the thrill is gone, selling them off for more than they paid for them, and buying the next "new shiny thing".
Now if the old shiny has been played for more than 200 games (some magic non sequitur number that collectors keep pulling out of their butts) and it's chipping and peeling, your investment is impacted, your resale value drops and you are left with a sub par machine that you have to try and pawn off on some newbie.
I believe it is this narrative that drives the playfield perfectionists and their desire to break out the pitchforks and torches and go looking for some QC department manager's head to chop off when their "investment" is tarnished by manufacturing defects.
I can still remember the days when I went looking for a pin, I had to choose between a blown out, lost art, bare wood players machine, or a slightly well used and dinged up route queen. There was not a lot of NIB HUO machines to choose from, and buying a pin NIB for HUO was something only the obscenely wealthy or well off could afford.
Now we have your average pinhead newbie who is a baby boomer or GenXer, with empty nest syndrome, kids out of college, and they are discovering the hobby, and going whole hog into collecting. Their collections, however, are not like the old schoolers, where we bought our machines to keep mostly forever, they are buying what they like to play and selling what has gotten "old".
It's this churn of buying and selling that fuels the FOMO now when pins are introduced, people just have to have the latest shiny thing, which since they are not made of money, something old has to go to buy the new, either financially, or space wise.
Now throw the monkey wrench of playfield defects (which do not affect the "fun" but do affect the "worth") and you have set the current shitstorm a-brewing.
Since I am not currently affected by the problem with any of my machines, it is interesting to see how the rest of the hobby reacts to this, most falling into one of two camps, enjoy the machine and quitchurbitchin, or "this is an affront to the pinball gods and we want blood (or a new populated playfield, and bring it back here place it next to the first one, but only slightly higher to give a two level effect, with a little path running down the middle... a path! a path!)

Quoted from smalltownguy2:

I disagree.
My game came with a defective play field. I asked to have my defective play field replaced. JJP refused. End of story.

Quoted from smalltownguy2:

No, you said that JJP should "send, at the very minimum, a perfect replacement playfield to all of those affected."
That is NOT replacing the field. Sending a part is not the same thing as replacing a part.

Quoted from Bublehead:

I used to believe I could put enough plays on a machine to require a pf swap, so I always bought a NOS playfield and kept it as an insurance policy on wear. Fast forward 25 years and that thinking has done nothing but leave me with a stack of NOS playfields and wear on my machines that has been almost undetectable, except for my NIB MBrLE, which has dimpled worse than any other machine in my collection. Will I ever swap out my old pf's? Maybe, maybe not, but one thing is certain- newer playfields are softer and not as durable, so a Kruzman MBrLE playfield is in the works and will be swapped out when finished. I would not want to own a Mirco pf in any machine right now going forward. Not without it being HEP'd or Kruzmaned into a more stable state.

Quoted from smalltownguy2:

I would like to keep my game. I would also like it to be defect free. Those are not mutually exclusive.

Quoted from Bublehead:Posted this in the other thread...
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/why-is-jjp-still-making-games-with-faulty-playfields/page/16#post-6318098
There is a legal angle that JJP is pursuing, a very well known and tried and true one to companies in the same situation.