Is the ProModeler F4U-5N really "new"?

your welcome blackwolfscd.

Keep in mind I don't actually design plastic model kits so this is the best info. I have based on my own experiances in designing plastic parts and what I've read.

Unnamedplayer- I think you answered your own question. To make anytihng else is a financial risk- but as we all know great risk can equal great rewards sometimes.

Toad,

Thanks 2 much for your explanation. It's always nice to get the story from "the horses mouth", so to speak.

Also, it's good that you mentioned the aftermarket manufacturers. Alotta people can't seem to understand why they really are "necessary", given the limitations of the injection molding process. (Including financial limitations) You've done a good job of laying it all out for those who choose to take it in.

Thanks again!

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so do we really need more me 109 g's, tigers, p51 d mustangs, and f4 phantoms? they all seem to be the same

...continutes

As has been stated, although the tooling cost is high (in the hundreds of thousands), piece part and cycle time is low. One you have a tool you can pump these puppies out on the order of thousands a day. Do some accounting; assuming you make a profit of $4 per model kit, how many kits do you need to sell to break even? ($500K tool / $4 = 12,500!) Will 12,500 kits be sold of a 1/48 scale Polish WW2 fighter this fiscal year? Your marketing department has to figure that one out ahead of time to make the business case. This gives you some insight why many subjects are never made.

Remember above all, this is a business! Manufacturers are not just in it for the fun of it. They are in it to make money. That’s OK in my book, this drives competition and thus superior products.

Believe it or not, the cheapest part of the model kit is probably the plastic itself! It is a relatively cheap commodity. I do believe most injection molded kits are a soup of PolyStyrene, some Vinyl, and a bunch of additives (color, process enhancers, etc.)

The good news: Technology progresses. New tooling technology is being developed (cheaper and faster). Computer Aided Design is becoming better (shorter concept to product times). A lot of aftermarket manufacturers use cheaper and lower volume processes to get us some of the details we want.

…and I’m spent.

I love a good question Mr. Blackwolfscd! (it feuls my ego).

FSM had an excelent article on this maybe 15 years ago, I beleive it was done on Testors in Illinios.

For the most part, models are started the old fasion way, a pattern is made based on photos, drawings and other refrences. This is more an art than a science- a sculptrure really. Some things are made oversized (like twice the size of 1/48) so the most detail can be done by hand and eye than scaled back down.

The "quality" we tend to rate kits at has a lot to do with the parts breakdown and how the kit is engineered -a.k.a how the parts fit together. For example will the fusulage of an F-16 be broken into 2 or 3 parts? You could probably get better detail with more parts BUT more parts are more costly and create more fit-up problems. There must be comprimise. This does take a lot of technical expertise in materials and processes knowing how parts will shrink, warp, and fill out in the mold. A lot of attention has to be given to tolerancing of parts (ex, +/- 2mm). Like any buisness, these companies have budgets, how much engineering time should be spent, how many parts or tools (molds) they can have, how may mistakes can be made! So experiance is valuable.

Conversely as a design engineer creating "widgets" for tractors (I work for John Deere), The above is completely electronic. We create 3D CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) models and tooling is cut via CNC (Computer Numerical Control) right off the 3D model. Once you "cut" a tool (or mold) the fat lady has sung, so a A lot of analysis is done up front- mold flow, Structural Analysis, and Tolerance Stack-ups (fit-up to other parts in a worse case scenario). Iterations are made and when we feel confident in a design we release for tooling to be made.

Their are technical limitations to injection molding that prohibit the amount of detial that can be represented. Generally speaking, injection molding is very precise allowing very crisp fine detail which is one reason why it is used. What cannot easily be done (without great expense in tooling) is undercuts in a part. The injection mold is typically broken into 2 halves (male and female part of mold or core and cavity) and these halves must pull apart after the plastic is injected adn cooled. If it doesn't, your in deep doodo.

Toad,

I'm glad that you said what you said about scaling stuff down. Many folks can't understand why certain details on a kit are "out of scale", one of the more common things being panel lines. If they were molded in scale, they wouldn't "look good" cuz they may very well be almost unseen.

I have a request for you Toad. If you have the time, and if it's possible to simplify the process into words that a dolt like myself would understand, could you explain what you know about what's involved in designing injection molded...stuff? LOL I'm very interested in learning about all aspects of the hobby, even the engineering phase of tooling a kit. If not, that's perfectly understandable.

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All True. As an engineer who designs injection molded parts on occasion (and working on my MBA) Revelograms partnership with Asian kit manufacturers makes perfect sense. Not only is their the initial tooling charge of around $500K but don't forget the engineering time in developing that- your over $1million US now.

Typically tools are made cheaper in Asia (lower labor and material cost of the steel). In my experiance the quality is also better.

Likewise, Engineering can be contracted out to Asia. Unfortunately just scaling down CAD (3D geometry) from the actual aircraft doesn't work. Details that exsist on your typical model just would't scale down (cockpit, wheel wells, panel lines, control surfaces would be too thin to mold). Not to mention an engineer needs to consider the part breakdown (fusulage halves, wings, etc.). This process is still more of an art than a science.

Hey Butz,

Yeah, I've thought of that, many times! And the swapping of molds is nothing new, it's been done since the very earliest days of the industry. It just seems that it's now running rampant again.

The molds used for the Amtech P-40's are indeed the AMT molds, but at least Amtech have kitted the "E" which was never released by AMT. I, for one, am glad that Amtech have picked up where AMT left off even though the kit in general is a bow-wow compared to, say, the Mauve kits. It's still a decent kit and a good alternative to the Eduard re-boxes of the Mauve offerings, especially if your wallet isn't that big.

As far as the P-61 is concerned I can tell you with full confidence, after talking to Alan Griffiths and seeing some of the plans/blueprints at the NATS last year, that it will be an entirely new kit.

In response to Markuz, I know what you mean when you compare some domestic kits to those of foreign manufacture. However, the Accurate Miniatures kits of the past were tooled abroad as were many of the ProModeler releases.

And as Jcarlberg re-iterated for me, new kits are just plain expensive to produce. Look at the Monogram B-17. When it first came out, it was a pretty expensive kit. It still is relatively expensive, but it's also already payed for itself many times over, and that's how Revellogram has been able to keep the relative cost of the current boxings down.

And it's not so much that the modelers are "forcing" the manufacturers to produce limited appeal subjects, look at it this way; the manufacturers have already kitted much of what we really wanted to see. Mostly all that's left are these obscurities.

Admittedly, this IS due to the inherent demands of the modeling community that new subjects be kitted, but also to the manufacturers' efforts to satisfy these demands. This is certainly an understandable practice; they want to stay in business. But other than that, in no way is it absolutely obligatory that they do so. They could simply continue to rebox existing product, but that would be imprudent. It is of their own accord that they have collectively continued to quench our thirst for truly new kits.

Many larger manufacturers are simply not willing to produce kits of some of these obscure subjects. Enter the limited run kit. And limited run does, indeed, mean higher cost.

Perhaps this latest practice of Revellogram/ProModeler is only an interim measure. However, it's my opinion that, sadly, this is not the case. Regardless, we will still have much new plastic and resin and brass and whatever else we, as a collective whole, want to see. For a while, anyway.

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The problem all manufacturers face is that in mass production, the first unit costs 10 or more times what the 10,000th one does, and so on. The fact is that $500,000 is the rough price of a new tool (mold), and the company has to either sell a bunch, or charge a lot for the ones it does sell, to come out. The modeling community seems to want short-run, limited appeal, near museum quality molding, and that drives up costs. The approach the manufacturers are forced to adopt is to reissue kits frequently, with new decals or features, and share packaging with other makers to get longer runs. Perhaps CAD/CAM will ride to the rescue eventually, with a universal molding system wherein the dimensions of the original are keyed in, the scale of the model is selected, and the machine does the rest.

Whaz up,
Hey Steve, heres another good example. How about when the "new guy" AMtech came out.
They posted that their P-40 line was "new". Well when you go to open the box and smell the plastic, AH what does it say on the tree but AMT/ERTL.
When you think that a company will be fresh w/ new ideas and tooling "BAM" they go and do this. SO is their P-61 gonna be "new" or a re hash of the Revellogram.
I want new ideas,toolings ect. Hey Steve ever thought about starting a company LOL... Flaps up, Mike

QUOTE: Originally posted by blackwolfscd This type of agreement would be beneficial to a company such as Hasegawa in that their kits may now reach a previously untapped market. There are many folks here in the USA that will not buy a Japanese kit simply because it's not made here in the USA.

Good point there but honestly, I am somewhat "scared" of buying American kits because of the bad experiences I had, comparing it to the quality of the Asian brands at the same price (I used to buy kits when I was still in the Philippines) .Generally for me, American brands suffer against those foreign counterparts. Of course, these are just generalizations and there are exceptions such as the fine offerings of Accurate Miniatures. However, they are on the expensive side especially where I used to buy my models.

I'd have to say that pretty much all the "new" ProModeler kits from now on, very likely, will be Hasegawa or other existing molds that are used by license. All the latest ProModeler kits have been either Hasegawa or already existing Revellogram/ProModeler kits almost without exception. The only one I can think of is the Ta 154 Moskito, which was a Dragon mold that was never actually kitted by Dragon/DML.

My guess as to why this is being done is that Revellogram finds it cheaper and more convenient to market already exisitng kits and pay the relatively small licensing fees as opposed to the enormous cost of producing brand new molds.

An agreement between Revellogram and Hasegawa (or any other manufacturer) along these lines would be mutually beneficial in many ways. Not only would Revellogram not have to develop and produce expensive new kits, but they also can reduce the work force needed for said development and production, thereby scoring a double coup in cost-cutting measures.

Let's face it, why has Revellogram been sold so many times recently? They simply are not making the money that they used to.

This type of agreement would be beneficial to a company such as Hasegawa in that their kits may now reach a previously untapped market. There are many folks here in the USA that will not buy a Japanese kit simply because it's not made here in the USA.

Boxed under the ProModeler name, these kits will take on the guise of an "American Product", and some that would not previously have purchased the 1/32 Hasegawa Bf 109 may very well buy the "new" 1/32 ProModeler Bf 109.

Two words explain it all. Money and marketing.

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Probably Hasegawa.
We get the opposite over here: Revell/Monogram kits packaged as Hasegawa.
Although it usually has the Revell/Monogram logo somewhere on the box.

My understanding is it's the Hasegawa in a Monogram Package. I don't know about the instrument panel.