Dirt and Wear

Ball marks around the town square yellow bumper, and around the red bumper. The mylar overlays don't go this close to the bumpers. I think that these are just in the clearcoat - so far. Here's the dirt embedded in the shooter lane. There's also a groove in the spiral orbit, where it cannot be seen. This looks like a candidate for the cyanoacrylate repair method.

Here's a powerball surface closeup. This is after a bunch of buffing,, which helped a bit but could not eliminate the gouges.The original pinballs looked worse, and were quickly replaced. These rough balls can do serious damage over time.

The playfield has a large mylar cover that goes from the flippers at the bottom to the ramps at the top.There was a factory mylar part available; there appear to be alignment marks at the top of  the playfield.

This mylar had also bubbled over the inserts. I popped the bubbles with a sharp knife, which helped. That picture shows a much reduced bubble. I don't plan to remove it anytime soon. I did use the freeze method on my Wizard. The mylar popped right off, leaving a mirror-smooth layer of adhesive.. Removal was straughtforwards with goo-gone gel and a plastic putty knife.

The Butterflied Scoop.

Metal-to-metal contact marks up the balls, making them into little rotating files with significant dirt carrying capacity. So reducing metal edge impact is important to prolonging playfield life. The kickers and poppers all (should) have plastic tips.The ramps present flat sides to the ball. So the scoops are the biggest source of damage.

The slot machine scoop presents two sharp edges to the balls, which appears to be responsible for most of the ball damage from the playfield. There's a similar edge on the left side of the piano scoop; you can see where the ball has beaten a curve into the metal, where the yelo target does not shield it.. The slot machine gets way more hits, and looked far worse. So it got butterflied. The edges were bent out slightly, and smoothed over. Now, the ball can no longer hit a hard metal edge because of the target on the left and the post.on the right. Inside the scoop, you can see the welds from the original repair.

The Rocket Kicker Dimple

The rocket kicker and slot machine kickout have mylar on the playfield to protect against dings: it works well. But wher the ball drops into the rocket kicker, entering the playfield after a skill shot, there is a nasty divot. The playfield has chipped, and the ball sometimes settles there if the kicker side plate is not properly adjusted. I believe this damage to be from the kicker as it first accelerates the ball towards the hitchhiker lane.