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Forums - News / General |
For General modelling or hobby-related topics that are not covered by any other specific forum. Please keep to topics concerning the hobby. |
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| Subject: | I've only seen one kit that badly done. |  |
| Date: | Jul 12, 2006 |
| From: | Hans haase | |
The only kit that I have ever seen where the molding quality was definitely sacrificed in order to make a profit was a B-48 'Tornado' kit by Mach2. For an $80 plastic kit, and a very basic one at that, I would have expected at least an attempt at quality control. Some minor flash, I can deal with. Ejector pin marks, an unavoidable part of the process. An occasional missing or broken piece, hey.... it happens. But this was beyond any concept of acceptable.
In this particular case, the flash was bad enough to make about 10 parts in the kit totally worthless. Another 2 or 3 per sprue were short shot . Unfortunately, it was the majority of the cockpit and landing gear components that were no good. Most of the flashed over ones were grouped around the center injection point. It actually filled in entire spaces between some of the runners, and was thicker than some of the most petite parts. I eventually had to order replacement seats, scratchbuild new control columns, and built it with the landing gear raised. I would have returned this kit because of the problems, except that it was going to be a gift for a former pilot of this type of plane and no other company makes a kit. I must have put well over 200 hours into that kit over the course of 5 months. The terribly flaky plastic didn't help matters much either.
Almost as bad in that kit were the ejector pin marks. I don't know if they were using pins that were too short, or just didn't care about them being retracted too far. Instead of small areas to sand down or fill in, I had a fair number of ejector pin 'marks' that were 3/4" to 1.5" long x 3/16" diameter rods. Since there were 4-6 of these per fuselage side, I had an equal number of massive sinkmarks to deal with. The wings weren't AS bad, those only had 1/2" long ejector rods.
I have had folks inform me that other kits they have bought from Mach2 suffer from the same problems. That is too bad, because they do make a lot of really interesting and unique subjects that you can't get elsewhere. Unfortunately, it's just too much work for me to ever buy a kit from them again.
-Hans |
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 | Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - Bill Goodrich - Jul 12, 2006 |
| . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - Gerald Owens - Jul 12, 2006 |
| . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - Christopher C. Tew - Jul 12, 2006 |
| . . . . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - michael kenny - Jul 12, 2006 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - John Barnicoat - Jul 12, 2006 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I've only seen one kit that badly done. - Hans haase - Jul 12, 2006 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - Kurt Laughlin - Jul 12, 2006 |
| . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - Patrizio - Jul 13, 2006 |
| . . . . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - Scott Dimmick - Jul 13, 2006 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - Patrizio - Jul 13, 2006 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Model manufacturing question - mould degradation - michael kenny - Jul 13, 2006 |
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