Hi all,

I have decided to write a comment here.

Manufacturing process:

We are and will always react and improve things which cause errors and problems. These are not things which are ignored as many people here state. I take all problems serious and try to investigate the reason why things happen and resolve it. Just to give you some numbers the real issues here are really low compared to the total manufactured playfields. Out of several 10.000s of playfields we have a really low number of issues. I would never claim production errors can't happen, but we took a lot of precautions, especially in the past 3 years, to avoid any problems. The clearcoat for example is sprayed on with a robot and automatically dispensed by special pumps and mixed fresh right at the nozzle to get the exact same amount and mix for every board. This process is checked during application and documented in a file.

Beside that every playfield is pulled off and pressure tested with a digital tester. Every playfield contains a later cutted off area which is destructive tested and documented. Only test passed boards will ship.

With thousands of playfields being made in our company every year does anyone really thing that they are right and we don't care? Really?!? Of course we do and I do track what is going on.

In-process quality control is very important and we spent a lot time and money to check and improve every step. One reason I have so many robots is that they don't make human related errors and do the exact same job all the time. I have upgraded the robots a lot in the last years.

The finishing and buffing robot for example is one of them. Previously I had employees who buffed out dust spots. Now I have a robot with all necessary tools and a camera with a high end software behind to do that. The robot does fully automatically detect and remove dust which happens during clearcoating. I would post pictures or videos of the system but the process is top secret as even car manufacturers are currently interested in our system. They did not solve issues we fixed...

Long story short, we did and will always improve and continuously improve and develop. That we don't care and do nothing is simply false.

Missing or wrong art:

I do always correct and fix things which show up during sales. The ij teeth have been fixed right away as well as the missing insert text on Whirlwind and twilight zone door panel. As of right now I'm not aware of any missing text or wrong art.

New titles:

I know that here are many people waiting for specific titles to be made. The truth is that we did not have any capacity in the past few years to work on new projects. Our space and machine capacity was exceeded. As you can imagine it is not easy to raise capacity after a certain point. It took me more than 1,5 years to finish our new building which is in addition to the existing building. We have already installed a new second printer and some cnc machines to speed up. As of now we are moving slowly into a better position which means we will be able to finish the new already started projects soon. Followed by new titles.

New projects coming up:

With the new space we will set up a full automatic robot based production of pinball cabinets. The idea is to have different versions of new cabinets available in different finishes. This line will be set up during the year and I will update once we are running. At the time the cabinets are in production it will be possible to buy a new cabinet with either direct print and high end finish or any kind of currently used artwork of different titles for a fair price. So you don't have to worry about preparing a cabinet or installing decals. More info for this will follow.

The funhouse playfield posted earlier here:

If you look close at the outhole you will see that this game had tons of games played. The wood is worn off which does not happen fast or easy. This playfield is definitely made with the old process which is not as durable as the new one. Our test stations show wear like this after approx. 300.000 cycles which would be approx 15000 or more plays at least. Current process lasts more than 2.000.000 cycles and still does not show issues. This game is most likely running in a barcade or similar with lots of plays on it. This playfield was definitely sold more than 5 years ago. That was in use for just 4 weeks? - I really doubt that and the owner is welcome to contact me if so. As of today he did not.

If someone has a problem or issue please send me an email to [email protected] and I will try to help the best I can.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Best regards,

Mirco Steffen
Systemtechnik GmbH & Co. KG

www.mircoplayfields.com
www.Facebook.com/mircoplayfields

I think I have to chime in here again which I usually did not want. But if someone external would read these comments it sounds like we produce only crap and don't care. That is simply wrong.

Compared to the volume we produce the issues are really low. Please keep in mind here that we run approx. 20 times as many playfields per year or more than the other manufacturers do. This does of course result into more public issues, especially after being in business with playfields for more than 15 years.

Of course mostly pitchforkers are writing here as complains always cause more attention than other feedback.

Let's say you are right and we produce only crap, how can you explain that there is not a single playfield issue reported on TS?

Yes there are people writing about their experiences and issues. But the fact they don't write, most of the cases are years old. Not all, but most.

Of course I take popping up issues serious and adjust production as far as possible right away.

Does anybody here believe I have not changed anything in the past 15 years?!? Really?

There was a ton of quality control added to the process steps and also in process monitoring to make sure all boards are what they are supposed to be.

Yes, sometimes things slip trough quality control, especially as humans do the final inspection. But if so and there is really a big issue I ship out replacements right away. And even if it is not a qc issue but more cosmetic, you can always ship the part back and get a refund.

Good thing of this thread is that it does the opposite of what the pitchforkers want to reach here, it pushes sales instead of blocking them. Guess the reason is that people don't believe everything written online.

Best regards,

Mirco Steffen