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Brief explanation and our questions for LSP projects


TANMODEL

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1. You need to etch a "cliche". Not cheap, all the more so as you need one per colour. And if the print is large, you need a large cliché.

2. Assuming you have a cliché, the process involves transferring ink from the cliche to the part with a pad (hence the name pad-printing - tampographie in French). This implies some mechanical pressure, so you must have a support for counter-pressure. Plus you need to do some precise positioning of the part to ensure the transfer is in the right place, so need some parts to tune-up the marking.

 

In summary, the process works for a series production, but is not really applicable for a single part, for practical and economical reasons (although I know of one watch company in Switzerland who prints with this process the serial number of their watch. Just the watches to which this applies start with a selling price with 5 digits - and the first one is not a 1 :) )

 

This said, pad-printing is used almost everywhere around you, from the keyboard of your computer to the reference of your glasses, to the name of your coffee machine, to the dashborad of your car, to the connectors-pins' numbers on a connector, etc ... My company has a few hundreds industrial customers using this technology.

 

Hubert

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Last month i went to one of my customers, and i saw they now use dry transfers for their logo on some of their parts produced in very small quantity, so it doesn't need to buy an expensive screen for silk-screen printing. It looks very good, in fact it's just as good as silk-screen printing.

I just dont understand why dry transfers never took off in our hobby. I tried once on a NMF model, and it worked quite well, but it was very time consuming. However, it did not worked so well on color painted areas, and many modellers were very unhappy with these dry transfers. But maybe the quality can be improved?

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I don't know if it is worthwhile, but if parts that are not type specific, such as gweapons, bomb racks, etc, could be produced on seperate sprues, they could be used in many different kit, but also marketed as a seperate product. I know Trumpeter and Hasegawa do this, But in 1:32 scale, the Trumpeter missiles and bombs ar OK, but not brilliant. A really good Mk 82 with a few different tail and fuze options would be perfect for the F111, but w

couls be used on dozens of different other kits too!

 

I am very pleased to see lots of sensible discussion here too, and I am sure it will be very useful for you, Baris! Thank you so much for asking!

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I am very pleased to see lots of sensible discussion here too, and I am sure it will be very useful for you, Baris! Thank you so much for asking!

 

Agreed. For a manufacturer to ask for the input of the modeling community, is a very god thing, and I'm delighted to see it happen.

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Hi,

 

I would like to stress another aspect: the cockpit tubs. For a mysterious reason (lack of documentation?), the tubs dimensions and angles of multi-seat plane kits are often wrong. It is true some compromises have to be made (for instance to combine the front landing gear well and the front cockpit floor) but this does not explain everything.

 

As you referred to future Phantom releases, I wanted to stress this point. Just to give an example: on their 1/32 kits, Revell and Tamiya added a fantasy front bulkhead for the rear station whereas the floor should go up to the front cockpit rear bulkhead AND because they angled the rear station rear bulkhead. Result: the rear cockpit floor of the Revell Phantom is... 25mm too short! Hence, it is not surprising the rear electronic boxes are either missing or too small.

 

Again, a copy of the full plane design would prevent this.

 

Hope this helps

 

Thierry

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