Yep...I just got this from CPR....
Hello Paul,
Yes, The Pinball Factory's FLASH backglasses are ours.
They aren't seconds. Every single one in the run is 5 to 6 mm too tall. This was my error in production. I intentionally had the glass height expanded a little bit when the blank glasses were cut at the glass factory. My "brilliant" idea was that adding that little bit of clearspace at the bottom allowed my press to print the image with a clean edge to start the ink, meaning it wouldn't blob or serrate the screens at the edge of the glass (I have cut/popped screens before on the edge of glass when printing and ruined $500 screens before). So Flash was a new experiment in adding a little height to the glass in lieu of having a "start point" for the ink. Backglasses are printed from the bottom edge to the top edge, by the way. That is why.
But later it was found out that about 1 in 4 Flash owners had trouble getting it into their backbox. That little bit of extra height was just a hair too much for some of the Flash backboxes. The glass couldn't "rise" into the upper channel high enough to give clearance at the bottom so it can go "up and over" the lower channel and drop down. There were over 10,000 Flash machines made, and some of the backboxes don't have the upper channel cut deep as others, or sometimes the aging backboxes have shrunk or sagged a little bit. Either way, the small height extention I did on these glasses can, even that slight, can make the difference you are experiencing.
There are two solutions that all customers who experienced this have successfully done in the past:
1) the upper channel in the backbox can be dug a little deeper, so the glass can "rise" higher. A router or Dremel tool does the trick. Takes about 10-15 minutes.
2) or, the lower wooden bar that the glass goes "up and over" is shaved down (with a plane, sander, etc) by 2 to 3 mm...then repainted. Then the glass will clear it, and drop down.
Some guys did a combination of both. In the end, we had no returns of the glass. Everybody got them in their machine, as they wanted. They really didn't want to send them back, and were courageous and worked out a solution (they didn't want to put their old flaking glass back of course). So none of them gave up on the repro.
All future glasses have not be height-expanded, as I learned my lesson. If I end up slicing my screens, so be it. It will have to be my problem.
If you have any other questions, let me know. I have copied-in the Pinball Factory on this response.
Thanks.
