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1/24 Fw 190 D9 Frankfurt 1945 27th March update
- Thread starter Brokeneagle
- Start date
phantom II
Master at Arms
I like it a lot Ian . Still not understanding why wheels and gear doors never seem to be of same dimensions...
Makes sense in 1/72 scale due to the thickness of the plastic but It seems that in 1/24 th , they would have ironed that out :hmmm
And plastic that defies gluing :facepalm That's the second time I have read this in a similar amount of weeks .
Happy you solved the problems like you always do :drinks Cheers, Christian B)
Makes sense in 1/72 scale due to the thickness of the plastic but It seems that in 1/24 th , they would have ironed that out :hmmm
And plastic that defies gluing :facepalm That's the second time I have read this in a similar amount of weeks .
Happy you solved the problems like you always do :drinks Cheers, Christian B)
Brokeneagle
Master at Arms
Thanks Bob, Skinny Mike, Iron Mike and Christian."Still not understanding why wheels and gear doors never seem to be of same dimensions...
Makes sense in 1/72 scale due to the thickness of the plastic but It seems that in 1/24 th , they would have ironed that out :hmmm"
- agreed, the company put in so much work to get out this large kit with all the exterior detail but then 'go limp' on fit and form when it comes to the finer points - I never understand this. If you have gone this far and committed so much, why not get it right. Maybe Bob L has some insight as he has run a model company before? :idonno
Must be a cost thing?
Ian.
"Still not understanding why wheels and gear doors never seem to be of same dimensions...
Makes sense in 1/72 scale due to the thickness of the plastic but It seems that in 1/24 th , they would have ironed that out :hmmm"
- agreed, the company put in so much work to get out this large kit with all the exterior detail but then 'go limp' on fit and form when it comes to the finer points - I never understand this. If you have gone this far and committed so much, why not get it right. Maybe Bob L has some insight as he has run a model company before? :idonno
Must be a cost thing?
Ian.
It's all about cost, Ian and Christian!
It's been the eternal question from modelers since I've been modeling. It's the same if you were a major injection plastic manufacturer or all the way down to a kitchen table resin manufacturer. There are so many costs involved in putting together a kit. Modelers spend hundreds, even thousands of hours building a kit, so, it's difficult to explain why a manufacturer can't spend a few more for this or that. It's because that everything a manufacturer does costs money. Nobody works for free, and all the talent required to put together a multi-faceted kit requires many talented people.
I could never possibly cover all those costs on this blog, but, believe me, it is considerable. I've been out of it for awhile, but 10 years ago, the steel molds for an injection plastic kit ran into the tens and even the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cost of RTV and polyurethane resin alone is staggering! We bought it by the 55 gallon drums. The resin drums were right at a thousand dollars a drum each, (They were two part), and the RTV drums were even more. Then you have PE which is very expensive, dry transfers, also expensive, somebody with skill has to draw the instructions. With resin kits, I saved money by doing all, or most, of the box art personally. Then it must be photographed , processed by somebody who knows what he is doing in a computer, back then we used Photoshop and Quark Express, then the labels must be printed, boxes made, people in packaging to sort the parts, put them in plastic bags, then box them and seal them on a shrink-wrap machine, our hrink wrapper cost around $50K. Then there is advertising, even back then it was outrageous. If you want to sell a lot, you need at least one or two full color pages, hopefully the back cover or center pages, and, I haven't even mentioned the pattern maker who builds the master that begins the whole process, and, believe me, those guys weren't cheap! And, they had a right to demand high prices. In a mass market industry, they would have made many times more than in the model industry.. In fact, we lost several great pattern makers and sculptors to the toy industry back then.
There's even more! Some guys think the model industry is much larger than it actually is. In the resin and aftermarket business, a top seller in the figure range could be anywhere from 500 to 2500 kits. There were exceptions that sold in quantities above that, but, they were rare. That was one of the reasons that resin kits were so expensive. When your market is that tiny, you have a $2 million dollar facility, thousands and thousands of dollars in casting equipment, a hundred employees to take the orders, to pull the orders and ship, to package the products, the art department, the manufacturing employees, their salaries, their insurance, their workman's comp, their social security, and the list goes on, your insurance of all kinds, the costs never end. I had people say, Bob, VLS sells millions of dollars in merchandise each year, you must be wealthy as hell. The truth is that our industry had a profit margin of 1 to 2% of sales and many of you reading this probably make more money working somewhere than I did.
To determine retail price, you have to total every single cent you invest in a kit, plus the costs of manufacturing not only the kit but every thing that is sold with it, PE, Decals, Instructions, box art, packaging and the salaries of everybody involved both inside the company and those working outside. Then you divide those costs by the number of kits you think you will sell. Then, you have to sell them to distributors, (The guys who sell them to the hobby shops and Internet dealers). Their discount starts at 60% off the retail price as they, then in turn, must discount to the hobby shops @ 40 to 50% off the retail. Say the retail price is $100 to make the math easy. It cost you $25 to take it from concept to packaging, you give them their 60% off, that leaves $40 for you. However, you also pay shipping.. Back then, we had a UPS driver that made more money than Susan. Shipping ran as much as 10%. So, we had a net of $40, shipping cost $10, (10% of the retail, $100 = $10 shipping). Now, what you have left is $30 and your cost was $25. $5 isn't a lot of profit, and, we haven't talked about advertising yet.
In plastic manufacturing, each time they find an error, they must send the steel molds back to the manufacturer for the redesign. I believe they are all made in Asia today, and that isn't cheap. The owner of the plastic kit company can't look at the sprues and determine is the wheels are not fitting the wheel wells. So, he has to have people do that by building it. That takes time and money and if errors are found then it must return to Asia for retooling.
I have only covered the basics here, it is a subject that could go on and on. As expensive as kits have gotten in the last ten years, (I'm buying them myself these days, and the prices blow me away), I'm sure the reason for their prices haven't changed much. I remember getting depressed after calculating the cost of a kit and realizing it would be so expensive, wondering if anybody would ever buy it.
Not much is ever as lucrative as it may seem outside looking in. Those of you reading this who have their own businesses can relate. It's nice to be your own boss, but the rewards are never what others imagine!
Bob
Not to mention, have you ever read what it takes to get the wheels in a wheel well on a real aircraft? Reading about the C5 landing gear is just staggering. To look at them you'd think no way those things can fit in that space.
phantom II
Master at Arms
Yiiikes, I did not mean to litter your thread with this much info . Allow me a few words and I'll bail out.
I read that Trumpeter kits often have glaring errors but I also read that they sometimes correct these issues . I'm sure a cost is involved .
I'm curious about the new generation kits , that are made using new ideas like like computers and something related to ladar ( ? ) for measuring sizes and shapes .
Brings up the question as to whether this system is capable of making a wheel wells and a door to match it . It's the same dimension, ( Just in reverse ) after all :facepalm but what do I know ?
About landing gears , they will always be simplified. Even the lowly Phantom had more parts in the main gear that I can name and at times just fitting a new main gear door could take two or more days.
Ok, I'm done . Cheers, Christian B)
I read that Trumpeter kits often have glaring errors but I also read that they sometimes correct these issues . I'm sure a cost is involved .
I'm curious about the new generation kits , that are made using new ideas like like computers and something related to ladar ( ? ) for measuring sizes and shapes .
Brings up the question as to whether this system is capable of making a wheel wells and a door to match it . It's the same dimension, ( Just in reverse ) after all :facepalm but what do I know ?
About landing gears , they will always be simplified. Even the lowly Phantom had more parts in the main gear that I can name and at times just fitting a new main gear door could take two or more days.
Ok, I'm done . Cheers, Christian B)
Christian, normally I wouldn't hijack a thread like this, but, Ian did ask me and there is no short answer! . I'll make this as quickly as I can, and then I'll get off the thread. In 1996, I went to Montreal Canada for the purpose of buying an injection plastic company. I spent three days in the factory. That was 22 years ago, and the technology they were using then was a computer with a cad system. If the designer input flawed data, then the mold would be flawed as well. "Garbage in garbage out". Once the design was laid out in 3D, then the computer was hooked up with an early version of a 3D printer. The one they used was done in a clear glass container that looked a lot like a big fish tank filled with water. It used lasers to shape a cube of some sort of material into the sprue and so on down the line. The lasers began at the top and moved horizontally while others moved vertically in microscopic layers downwards until the sprue was finished. Then the sprue was used to make the molds.
So, at least back then, if the designer on the cad made errors, then I can pal;y assume the production kits would have those errors.
I decided against buying it for several reasons, but that's another story!
Bob
phantom II
Master at Arms
I realize this is not spam . I just never expected this much info
About the designer and his input , that is correct . Anything that comes out of a program cannot be better than anything that is first input . Same with making bearings. They only come out as good as the operator inputs ( barring machine problems )
Still , I am very curious about the new process that Airfix is using to scan actual subjects and making molds from it.
Interesting process. Hopefully better as the operator maybe removed from the process.
Cheers, Christian B)
Oh, in the case of Airfix' new process, I have no clue?
Sorry,
Bob
Sorry,
Bob
.... 
Brokeneagle
Master at Arms
B) Thanks Bob and Christian - i wanted answers and i got them!
:laugh: great insight into the model industry. thanks fellas.
I worked in design engineering in the automotive industry for 25 years and was directly involved with 3d CAD and prototyping etc - the sub contractors always get stuff wrong and the design envelopes for things like the engine bay, wheel wells and interior cabin are continually stretched in all different directions to allow for design ques and safety requirements not to mention material restrictions and issues found during testing. I understand that the model industry would have similar issues. The big car companies continually stretch the supplier companies to get more profit and even then the car companies are only making a tiny margin on each new car. The money is made in spare parts and servicing when you come back to keep the car running over many years.
Ian.
:laugh: great insight into the model industry. thanks fellas.
I worked in design engineering in the automotive industry for 25 years and was directly involved with 3d CAD and prototyping etc - the sub contractors always get stuff wrong and the design envelopes for things like the engine bay, wheel wells and interior cabin are continually stretched in all different directions to allow for design ques and safety requirements not to mention material restrictions and issues found during testing. I understand that the model industry would have similar issues. The big car companies continually stretch the supplier companies to get more profit and even then the car companies are only making a tiny margin on each new car. The money is made in spare parts and servicing when you come back to keep the car running over many years.
Ian.
Brokeneagle
Master at Arms
fledermaus
Master at Arms
Wow Ian, this is going to be another master piece, love the scratch building and extra details 
Waiting for the next update
Abdin
Waiting for the next update
Abdin
Brokeneagle
Master at Arms
Wow Ian, this is going to be another master piece, love the scratch building and extra details
Waiting for the next update
Abdin
Thanks Abdin.
I am working on the cockpit at the moment - I am using the PE painted dials from Eduard and have been reminded of how much I hate PE. The dials are small enough in 1/24 scale let alone 1/32. I find this side of modelling very tiresome these days and have to push through - there doesn't seem to be much joy in the really fiddly stuff anymore!
Ian.
Wow Ian, this is going to be another master piece, love the scratch building and extra details
Waiting for the next update
Abdin
Thanks Abdin.
I am working on the cockpit at the moment - I am using the PE painted dials from Eduard and have been reminded of how much I hate PE. The dials are small enough in 1/24 scale let alone 1/32. I find this side of modelling very tiresome these days and have to push through - there doesn't seem to be much joy in the really fiddly stuff anymore!
Ian.
To be honest, there's much better PE to be had. Not to get started on Eduard but in some cases kit parts look better than the pre printed stuff and the colors are questionable sometimes. I like the Archer Fine Transfers and Aeroscale dials myself.