FYI - they don't rip even with a 18" machete! Nice job Haggis!

Great stuff! I didn't realize there were so many titles with similar construction. I know the Hyperball playfields I have had held up really well, and those took a pretty good beating.

Looking forward to the success of Haggis pinball!

Chris

Varkon has a playfield similar to this. Great job.

Very nice

One question, is the artwork being printed onto the pf then the acrylic on top? or is the pf now just bare wood and the acylic has the artwork reverse printed onto it? basically like a massive plastic?

I am also wondering why stern/JJP etc.. have not played with this idea yet? as its a pretty obvious one! Haggis are in a good position to swap to it from the get go. But why not others are they just setup for the old way to much effort to swap? what changes would they even need to make to swap? Have they dolne there own internal tests and found its not as good or something? Just weird why no one else has done this?

Yes, I had been wondering about this sort of thing for a long time. Wooden playfields made sense "way back when", since good wood was easy to come by and could be "worked" easily.
Now that we have other materials (that are often less expensive than good wood), why not use them? Is there some reason (other than tradition) why playfields have to be wooden?

Well done Haggis. His youtube channel is pretty interesting as it is a day by day blog on how they design things etc.

The wiring episodes were a little dry though...

Python Angelo developed indestructible polycarbonate playfields as far back as Pinbot. There were good reasons business wise that the technology was not used to its fullest potential.

You can hear him discuss both playfields and translites with Clay Harrell on his podcast.

Start listening at 1hr 10min - http://www.pinrepair.com/topcast/topcast_42.mp3

Thanks
Blake

Bally Speakeasy is a good answer as to why. It had a resin playfield. It holds up BEAUTIFULLY, as far as wear goes. But it also warps... badly. Also, the resin playfield builds up a static charge and triggers random switches.

Thanks for all the responses all

Some really good questions and points to be discussed. I'll shoot another video this weekend and we'll try to go through and respond to them all

Cheers,
Damian

I was thinking they needed to throw a handful of coil dust and rubber bits in there to get more realistic conditions.

Looks good. Similar to Mafia and Thunderbirds Playfields. Seems only a matter of time until it becomes industry standard.

Have met Damian a couple of times he has so much energy and passion for Haggis its great to see. Maybe a Ned Kelly next?

I don’t know man a video of some hairy dudes love-tapping a thick acrylic block with tools and everybody thinks it’s a “paradigm shift?”

We’ll see. I’ll be pretty surprised if this ever becomes the “industry standard” but I’ll enjoy watching this play out.

Personally not a fan and it's no "paradigm shift", but from a manufacturing and consistency standpoint would make sense. Would save manufacturers a lot of headaches.

That remains to be seen. Using something besides wood has been tried many times, usually with less than satisfactory results.

Let’s see this thing hooked up to an actual pinball machine with actual components on both sides and hundreds of games a day on it before we declare it would save, and not cause, headaches.

As it is, they are not smacking a pinball playfield with a sledgehammer, they are gingerly tapping a piece of plastic art with various tools. Entertaining demo but pretty silly to declare it has any real world relevance to pinball playfields at this point.

OK boomer. Smacking playfields with pinballs is so last year. Tools are where it's at Levi, get with the programme.

Fair enough but my guess is if they replicated this as you put it “gingerly tapping” exercise on a traditional Playfield you might see the direction they are headed. My only negative would be this direction was tested with the market with hard tops and Playfield protectors that anyone could use yet most do not like the change. So it seems the options are Change or complain about dimples for eternity.

If Stern made this you'd already be on your third hand towel.

https://tenaciousd.kungfustore.com/accessories/cumrag-10d14-c.html

You guys are very easily impressed is all I’m saying. Get real.

Enjoy your acrylic block playfields. Gonna revolutionize pinball! Easy to tell from a quick YouTube demo.

And who is taking about stern? Not me. You are obviously obsessed. As far as I can tell they have nothing to do with plastic playfields.

Quite honestly, I'm not sure if this change in playfield material(s) will be better / worse than what is currently being utilized by the larger pinball companies.

However, I really like that this start-up is already working to find better methods at constructing their product and openly communicating with their prospective customers to gain feedback, suggestions, etc.

It is nice to at least see people who are trying to find solutions to the playfield issues instead of just what corner to cut next. I would like to see as much competition in pinball as possible and hope these guys can get it done. My advice would be try to get a great theme for their next release as that is what the pin landscape seems to want.
Since they are from Australia how about Mad Max........

822F7E48-D642-423B-B425-7C4D539837A4 (resized).png

Tongue and groove Oak, thats the secret. Ha Ha Ha.

They started on a project called Wraith which looked really cool, dark and spooky with a sort of Swords of Fury vibe to the sounds. Keen to see it happen I hope. This one theme and art wise is not my cup of tea but I hope it does well for them.
Met the guys one night in a pub pinball get together. Very positive outlook and I hope they do well and offer lots of titles.

Mad Max would be cool for sure. I just finished my retheme based on Mad Max 1 and have been toying about doing a Mad Max 2 version as well!
The Fury Road homebrew is looking pretty amazing, serious designing there.
Ironically the guy on the right in the video is responsible for the Meteor retheme mad max that you can see on YouTube that they were trying to sell but I believe hit legal issues with the man.

Great work on this! It's awesome to have people like you in the industry.

What's the cost on this method vs the de-facto clear applied today? Both in terms of time and BOM.

I’ve seen diamond lady in both versions also. The silkscreen version was not as crisp and the colors were not as vibrant but the Vitrograph version diamond lady I owned was pretty damn nice.

Something like this?

What is this white mar or mark on the Playfield after they hit the PF with the second Hammer?
Real damage or scuff? Or will it just wipe clean?
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Here's another screen grab after the sledgehammer blow.

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I like the concept otherwise, as it seems to have worked well on those Spanish Interflip pins from the 70s.
Though the feel of the game is a bit different (faster) then the ball rolling over conventional plywood.

I would like to see a 1 million roll test using a well used pinball.

You can make a protector yourself from 1,5mm macralon (Unbreakable) for every pinball machine that you want.
no more pooling or dimples or chipping.
Cost are 20 euro.
IMG_20200121_235955~01 (resized).jpg

That does not sound like an easy thing to do at all.

Agreed and if the picture is a representation I will stick with pooling personally.

Amazing!! I just love this. A group that is doing it right. Thank you Haggis, we need more of this in the community. Positivity and seeing obstacles as opportunities to improve as opposed to Bandaiding issues to help the bottom line. Cheers!!!

Also if you screw posts through it, the plastic will expand when the machine warms up and you'll have ripples everywhere. There is nothing this stuff is going to do to stop pooling if you free float it like a typical playfield protector.

There is nothing new about it. Playfield protectors has been around for long. Just make it a little bit thicker and make all bolts etc fit to it aswell to avoid any pooling issues and done.

The new thing is the clarity, realisation, and also, wich i really fancy, the ikea testing with the moving ball.
Maybe stern should pick up doing some tests on their new games or atleast play a couple of games, as it is now, is just ridiculous.

I dont think that fugly pic is representative for state of the art acrylic cutting, more gary stern doing toe nails.

Try this

Seems like it will definitely cure the 'problem of dimpling' and clearcoat chipping.

What's the thickness of the acrylic compared to wood? I recall seeing somewhere that combined they're the same thickness of a standard playfield, but can't find where that is now.

Surely you will be losing some mechanical grip from the screw going into the wood due to the first few mm (at least) of the screw effectively not gripping anything, just passing through a hole in the acrylic - unless you have to use longer screws which could end up coming through the other side.

Would there be enough grip to hold standalone posts, pop bumpers, etc. without them eventually working lose over time?

cant cut polycarbonate with a CO2 laser. You'd need a Yag/Fiber

I would expect that any post that is t-nutted to the bottom of the wood playfield would still be anchored that way, they would just need to be longer to pass through the acrylic as you said. Same would be for screw in posts, just make them long enough to compensate for the acrylic.

You can but it leaves a yellow gooey edge. The video he showed was oxygen cutting acrylics.

No you can't poly creates a black burnt gooey mess. A yellow edge is petg.

Re thickness in the video Haggis says it reduces the plywood to 9mm to keep everything stock.

Black, yellow, blue..... you Can cut it though!

That would be my major concern, you'd need specific screws and posts - not the standard sizes used by every other manufacturer

I have a friend that has around a dozen well maintained pins. Mostly classic B/W with Sterns and a couple JJP mixed in. I’ll typically play 2 or 3 machines when I visit, getting in quality time. His Ghostbusters has a playfield protector. His WOZ may have one as well.

I can’t tell the difference when playing one of those versus the other games. in fact I usually forget all about it. The only thing that makes me remember is that Ghostbusters has such colorful, vibrant art, and I always comment how good the clear looks on his game. And then I recall it has a playfield protector. It looks like it just came from the factory. And he’s the second owner!

Maybe if I played a Ghostbusters without a protector side by side with his I’d be able to tell a difference? Possible, but I doubt it. If the Haggis games play like what I’ve experienced, the only difference anyone will notice - versus new Stern’s anyway - is how great the playfield looks.

So if the plywood is only 9mm thick will this give enough "meat" for the screws to dig into without easily stripping the wood? (also realize that there still has to be some room between the screw and the other side of the plywood...)

Hi all - thanks for the commentary

I'm planning on making another video this weekend to respond to a lot of the questions that have been asked, as well as go a little more into the method of manufacture.

Cheers

Follow up vid