Quoted from pookycade:

I was the one who got burned on Xenon. Look I get that these guys have done awesome things for the hobby but their explanations after the Xenon debacle are IMO complete crap. Kevin you had a list, you guesstimated that 70 out of 100 might buy. You guessed wrong. Why the hell didn’t you do the simple step I outlined before as in DON’T GUESS ! One day of effort you could have easily re-confirmed the orders just before going to production, hell even asking for deposit as a show of good faith. You would have then known that you had 100 takers and upped your number. Your guys failure to plan and get information that is easily gettable is not your customers problem. Who in their right mind decides on production quantity from a pre-order list 2 years in the making with no deposit. It’s your problem. Deal with it. Don’t screw up again. Change your damn approach to something that isn’t just making up sh*t and then coming on here to try to defend a completely crappy approach to deciding how many playfields to build. This is solvable BY YOU with one days worth of effort if you chose to do so. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing all over again and expecting a different result. No business can make every customer happy. But you could make a lot more of your customers happy and stay in business more easily by trying a different planning approach

Quoted from pookycade:

Marvin if you run a business you get complaints. I just fielded one this morning for my arcade where I spent 30 minutes talking to a customer who wasn’t happy and I apologized. CPR can certainly ban me. They probably aren’t happy with me. I could have banned this customer I just talked to as well. Instead I offered to compensate them and told them we will be changing our signage so that we avoid their particular issue again, to better set expectations. So you can ban people, and you can’t make everyone happy, but if you use this approach you will probably be out of business soon enough. A smart business learns from its complaints and resets expectations. I don’t want CPR to be out of business. I want them to be better, I want them to better set expectations. From their response they are trying and that’s good enough for me and hopefully others as well.

Quoted from KevinCPR:

Even more precisely, they are all back from clearcoat. So they are ready to go. It's no longer in "The Pipe"... it's a shipping product as soon as I can get a DSLR photo shoot done, and get it announced. Then we begin the emails in waves...

We opted for a thicker veneer in the end, because it gives us more "meat" on the face(s) for drum sanding/levelling... we use the OEM methodlogy of gluing the inserts in their holes, slightly high, and the ENTIRE surface (inserts, epoxy, and all) get levelled down to flat. Like guitar neck inlays.
Since no plywood starts 'pool table flat' , there are slight high and low spots on the faces. If the veneers are business-card thin, there is risk of burnthrough and exposing patches of the next layer - which has happened in the past enough that 5%-10% of a run showing little burnthrough patches, albeit levelled, was just lower cosmetic quality.
The reason we go for both faces instead of one side is to give ourselves double the options of which side will be the front. So we literally make judgment on the actual woodgrain appearance before it is decided which side is "up" on the CNC machinery.

Quoted from Highclasspinball:

I want to make everyone aware that we do not use Baltic birch. We have the hardest north American maple top and bottom layers as visible veneers which are available on the market. We have them shipped in from north America and they go through a special hardness test to make sure they are hard enough. We use only A graded quality.
By the way - if top and bottom layer veneers are not in the same thickness the boards will warp. So if there are different thicknesses used or one is sanded too thin and the other is kept at full thickness warping could happen worse than normal.
Regards,
Mirco

Quoted from PinMonk:

That still doesn't explain their professional, experienced comment IN THE PLAYFIELD MANUFACTURE BUSINESS that they seek and get the "densest, hardest" playfields, and their face veneer is thicker than Sterns to achieve that, "Marvin".

Quoted from cpr9999:

Now we are getting to the question I would like CPR to answer.
CPR why do you use thicker veneer- purely for sanding or what are your other reasons? (Don’t need to point at other manufacturers here). Did you also go with thicker veneer so it would be harder - and resist dimples? Or mainly for sanding?

Quoted from stashyboy:

For those that don't know, formica type laminate products are basically the same thing resin and paper layers just with a hard plastic surface on top. Makes sense that it would machine easily since it's cellulose fiber based. Also, think about how hard and durable formica products are! I still have formica countertops in my kitchen that are original to the house from 1959 and are in decent shape!

Quoted from cottonm4:

Richlite is not Formica.

Quoted from cottonm4:

I’m sorry. You are correct. I should have addressed the original poster.
Trying to compare Formica to Richlite is like trying to compare horse apples to cow pies. They might be of the same but they are not the same.

Quoted from PinMonk:

Let's not promote the path of a Stern apologist with this kind of "out."
When Stern is sending out STEVE RITCHIE to parrot information he HAS TO KNOW is false (especially in light of them screwing him over with the legendary "as designed" non-fix for GoT Prem/LE mechanical design problem with the orbit), and they are loading up pinside with shills shouting down anyone who mentions the truth of their current playfields sucking due to much heavier cratering than earlier this century and all of the late 20th century, STERN KNOWS they're putting out an inferior playfield. And cutting them slack by letting the shills get away with denying the truth, or excusing them sending Steve to do their dirty PR work is not helping anyone.

Quoted from PinMonk:

No, actually as an unverified fake account, YOU got nothing. Trolling here or to me over and over on PM when I've asked you to stop bothering me until you're verified (because you're a fake/troll account) is still trolling, and you're using this fake account because you don't want to ruin your "good" rep on your verified account. You're not fooling anyone paying attention. Vpns and spoofed IPs can't change writing habits. You might persuade the dumbest that you're someone else, but that's about it.
Try verifying your fake pinside account and maybe then people will take anything you say seriously.

Quoted from PinMonk:

Let me boil it down to a VERY simple A/B for you:
A> CPR is using better wood and it does not crater, only dimples like the old pre-2008 "normal"
B> Stern is using lesser wood and it DOES crater much more noticibly than old pre-2008 "normal"
People saying Stern playfield wood is the same as it's always been are lying or blind, and CPRs very clear explanation of why things changed in 2008 and what choices they made (better) vs what choices Stern made (worse) give us the why in great detail.

Quoted from PinMonk:

You can mock all you want, but like I told you in PM when you were so desperate to be heard you couldn't stop PMing me, I'm not interacting with a fake account. Get verified and we can debate in the open. Until then, I'm not interacting with you. Using unverified shill accounts is cowardly. Fortunately I can block you on the forums, so goodbye, phony account.