Chapel Hill, NC
Quoted from BillinIndiana:Wonder what the guy with the NIB MM for $100,000 on Pinball Classified thinks about the re-release ?
Taking it in stride I'm sure but is likely toking extra hard on his bong to compensate.
(Topic ID: 66915)
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Medieval Madness
Williams, 1997
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Quoted from Concretehardt:What do you mean "cheaper"? You mean they are paying less or the quality is inferior?
To be honest, both. We use a much thicker plastic than original. We've sent out over 30,000 ramps in 11 years. Less than 25 have ever failed in the field. The new MM machines will at best have the same thickness as original. Don't get me wrong, it's all about economics and I don't blame them. If they do 1000 LE's and say 1000 Standards and save just $3 per ramp (two ramps plus moat) that adds up to $12,000 savings just for the two ramps not including the moat.
Most likely the new MM machines will not be exact as the original so our ramps would most likely not work as a direct replacement in the future.
Look at the ramps Stern uses, those are very thin and they save around $10 per ramp compared to what we would make. In a home environment they do well enough so it's not like you're getting something that will break in the first year or two.
FYI, one of the biggest factors in ramp failure is florescent lighting. It will "dry" up the plastic quicker than any other factor making it brittle.
Quoted from BoJo:This can be good and bad. I understand the reasoning behind making them ticker and it's so they don't break. I like the fact Pinball Inc makes ramps and am very thankful for having them in the hobby, however the ticker ramps can be a pain to install sometimes. Even though it's only a slight difference in thickness sometimes they just don't fit the same. I know on my FT and AFM I had to do some forcing and bending to get them to fit properly. In the one HEP restoration video he shows how he had to sand the end of the MM peasant ramp to keep the ball from jumping when transitioning from the ramp to the wireform. Just because PP is not using Pinball Inc ramps I don't think they should be considered cheap until we see them and judge for ourselves.
My comment was "cheaper", meaning cheaper than ours (see other post).
The first Fishtales we made were very different from the current ones. We found that the first ones were indeed a pain in the rear to install because we ended up way too thick.
The AFM Lobster was made using two different molds. If that's the one your talking about you should have received a small white spacer which would make the install simple and easy.
The MM peasant ramp was something that no one ever bothered to contact us about. It seemed it was thrown out on the forums but we never caught it because we really don't have a lot of spare time to spend on forums. Finally someone contacted us directly and all it took was 10 minutes for us to figure out that it is NOT the exit grove which caused the problem but it was the ramp wall at the exit being slightly flared outward. This flare was cause by our flame polishing where we flamed the inside first then the outside. Now we've reversed the order and no more issues.
It should go without mention that if there ever is an issue please contact us directly, our customer service department is not any of the public pinball forums.
We've been doing this 11 years. Like everyone else making parts from scratch we're not perfect but we do everything in our power to make sure we have the highest quality ramps available.
Cheers,
James
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