Bingo. The aged wood sources are depleted while their replants are harvested for a quick turn-around. These younger materials are very soft when compared to an aged relative. The harder/aged materials are gone. I'd like to 'think' a surface hardening technique is used for pinball surfaces. If not; they should.

I designed and built prototypes from Baltic Birch in 2015 thru 19. The best material was sourced from Russia and it was handled with great care to reduce surface scratches. One slip on an edge or a wood-chip produces a scratch. I imagine play-field producers are very careful when handling; They have to be. B.Birch is brutally strong, but its soft surfaces need care.

Baltic Birch Plywood is a bad-ass product. It's awesome. The Russian material sources and their manufacturing are top-notch. Anyone wishing to produce the best pinball play-field sources Russian BB.

I'm not familiar with the variety of species of used in BB. However, a 20 year-old Birch tree will be softer than an 80 year-old Birch of the same species. For logging; You want to tear that tree down and replant as soon as profitability allows. The old dense wood of the past is in the past. Loggers have acquired a massive quantities of land plots in various locations. Their land cycles of chop and replant are design for speed and profit not a ripe old age.

Young wood is a very strong and very useful. As such, profitability will decide when the tree comes down, not the density of its fibers.

Good Read. Looks like their play-fields are a 'secret-recipe' that continues its evolution today.

Spent over 2.5 decades manufacturing wooden gift items; There's no way that knot in the shooter trough would find its way into our Top-of-Line product. I'd suspect the playfield issues are plentiful to a level where the exposed knot starts to look good. It's tough.

The Baltic layers were a feature of the product;

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I'd say aesthetics and playfield integrity. When sorting playfields for Limited Edition assembly; I'd save that one for a lesser valued machine. When resources are low, I can imagine sorting defected materials to find a solution.

That playfield should be fine and it has character too. A knot can be frozen, filled and smoothed before clear, but we know that layer of Baltic has a number of large, hidden knots that are not addressed depending on the diameter of the tree. It'd be interesting if an ultrasound certification was provided, but that's overkill.

Every day I prep numerous machines for production. Two of them are 6-axis robots for lacquer application. The motion of the bot is the only constant. The source material, mixture, lines, atmosphere, surface prep, tip condition, this employee who knows how to do it better than that one, variable exhaust, dry oven conditions and whatever else I'm missing at the moment. My point is; robotic spray application is a process of numerous variables. The robot is an incredible too, but it doesn't do all the work and troubleshooting. There's extensive work behind the scenes to make the finished product shine like its supposed to.

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