How many plays do you think it had before it smoothed out. My acdc had some but they were really tough to seen. You had to have the right angle and light to see them so i wasnt comcerned.

I have looked up the dimpling issues and what is the cause. Is it soft wood, soft clear coat or what? I have 36-37 year old Williams without a single dimple. I also have a CPR with thousands of plays and not a single dimple.

Dimples have been gone over millions of times on the forum. all games dimple, it's not a flaw.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/playfield-dimple-reality-check

Not really, all of my games have had dimples. Expensive clear coat or stock.
Wood vs Steel. Steel will always win.

"There is no such thing as a 'non-dimpled' pinball playfield. Playfields can have less initial dimpling simply dependent on playfield design, ramps, and impact points, but any new owner should be aware that until compression of the wood is equalized based on the amount of standard 'wear and tear' of gameplay, a playfield will continue to dimple throughout its lifetime. Playfield material construction (not ink screening or coatings) has remained virtually unchanged for over 50 years. What makes dimples more noticeable on modern games is their clearcoat design and the fact that until the early 1990s very few people purchased games NIB."
- TBK

I have heard a lot of talk on wood but could it be thicker clear coat

Metal is harder than wood. All playfields dimple. This has been discussed a lot over the years. There is no magic clearcoat. Metal is harder than wood; no alternative facts here!

Marc

So is dimples the new Ghosting?

You'd have to be insane to buy a new Stern these days, unless you are sure it's a keeper for you. Not because of any playfield issues, but because rampant paranoia is going to make them almost impossible to sell to anybody here for a long time.

Yes when I get home tonight.

If new CPR playfields dimple why have has there not a single picture of one with dimples I can find here. Can someone post a picture of a CPR with dimples? I am not into new sterns so I have never seen anything like it until I went with my friend to pick up a F14. The seller has a Metallica and it looked like the surface of the moon. If my Williams had dimples that had "smoothed out" you would be able to tell under the edges of the apron and around the posts.

How about a routed, re-import I500?

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Where is Vid to berate you people with a wood species diatribe?

They just need some smoothing out...

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This game is covered in dimples but the can only be seen in certain light

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No. The ball makes the dimples. So, where the ball doesn't go it wont dimple. Over time the hard steel ball evens out the wood

Why are people so comcerned about dimples? Ive always heard that girls think dimples are cute

That's what I meant. If you look closely at the playfield where the ball touches and at the edge where a ball can't touch that's where you will see evenly compressed wood vs uncompressed. If it's the exact same = no dimples.

Someone post a pic of a young Kirk Douglas. That guy has a crazy amount of dimples.

We can argue this topic till we are blue in the face and no one will win. There is really no way to prove it unless someone wants to take a old NOS Williams PF and install it in a game and play the shit out of it and compare it to a new Stern. The Stern fans will still never admit that the wood used on new Stern games is softer. I removed the PF from a reimported, routed WH20 and the PF is still flat as a piece of linoleum. Not one dimple on the game anywhere or any other blemish to speak of except for the spot on the lost mine kickout and the ball trail on the upper PF. Im betting that if you put that many games on a new Stern that the PF would be falling apart. Did the old W/B games have the shooter lanes boogered up by the first week or the ball return cutout all fucked up, and we are talking home use not route? I think not. It doesn't matter to me because I cant afford to buy any game right now much less a new Stern at their ridiculous prices but I would say that new Sterns dimple waaaaay more than the W/B games did because of inferior materials. And again, it doesn't matter because it is what it is. Stern will never go back to using higher quality materials because they don't have to. They are making bank selling the likes of a rehashed Costco Batman for 12 thousand dollars.

They smoothed out bro.

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Look at the reflection of the orange standups on the left and the DMD in the second photo. No 'evened out dimples' will be that flat. 'evened out dimples' would also mean the wood would be lower than the inserts.

It's not uncommon for playfields to take dents and eventually look like orange peel. But they were not craters.

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My Theatre of Magic is pretty heavily dimpled. For my machines, ToM > GB > GoT > WoZ in terms of number of dimples from most to fewest. ToM I can attribute to age (largely flattened out), GB to speed/airballs. WoZ has most in the areas where airballs are prone (near munchkin pf).

I think the difference is that the veneer used on the older playfields is thicker and harder. The Stern pfs are much softer...

CPR even says they use a 25% thicker veneer than Stern...

Added a few pics of my WCS'94 this game is air ball city (spent most of its life on route) and the damn thing hardly looks like it ever took a dimple. There is no way in hell my GB pf will ever look this smooth after dimpling.

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1. All Playfields Dimple to varying degrees depending on wood hardness
2. Dimples show up more on new playfields/shiny playfields
3. If you don't want dimples don't play your game.
4. I have never noticed just the clearcoat dimpling

FACT

One side has the facts, and the other has the 'alternative facts'.

(Too bad Kulek's busy shredding compiling his documentation, or we could have him pop in with the middle truth and sort this whole thing out.)

Usually, people with the skills to do a playfield swap are not nubies that panic the moment they see dimples.

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It really is entertaining to see this "dimplegate" paranoia strike like it has here on Pinside lately.

I can only assume that it's due to the bad playfields that have gone out (with the bad ghosting and clearcoat disintegrating on some of them), so everyone is convinced that the dimpling isn't normal either.

Funny, I had a friend text me virtually the exact same thing!

I've started to notice wear on the playfields of every single pinball machine I've ever owned (hundreds of them).

Is this normal?!???????

Here they are..

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Word!

Good luck selling them!

keeps me up at night.

There is no debate.

A debate would imply that there are two schools of informed thought.

-

All Hard Maple playfields will develop dimples the moment they are played.

It does not matter if they are clearcoated or not.

It does not matter if they are from the 1950s or 2017.

It does not matter if they have a matte coating, or a polished mirror coating.

It does not matter if the topcoat is silkscreened on (like games from the 1950-80s)

It does not matter if the topcoat is sprayed on (like 1990-17s)

All Hard Maple wood is the same hardness (within a tested 7% variance of the Janka standard).

Only nubies and trolls post about playfield dimples on Pinside.

You can see the dimples on your WCS everywhere especially where there is glare, just not as pronounced as newer games as there are millions of dimples on your WCS .. as you said it was on route.

I'm the second owner of my MET prem it had dimples when i bought it, now after lots of plays you barely notice them as there is so many.

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The only dimples I care about from Pinball are these kind.

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I fully agree but have a question, if a piece of plywood for a playfield was put in a industrial press and squished down till it had a harder surface before it was printed on would it still dimple?

These games were meant to be played and thrashed about... dimples happen. Don't like it? Stick your game in a glass case and stare at it... otherwise, play away!

If my wife's ass starts to dimple can I turn her in for a young new ass?

From a new blood/naked eye stand point.. I see the most dimpling on my family guy and least amount on my black black hole...

All wood will dimple.

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Is this what we are going to start demanding now?

Yes, it still would.

Think of a magnet core on the playfield.

It's make of steel, but the impact of the hardened ball still makes dimples in it.

Somebody here got a problem with dimpling?

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I still like dimples

2017 is off to a crazy start that's for sure.