Any News on the Aeromodl 1/72 Boeing 737 kits?

[Dennis7423]

All-

 

Wondering if these are still in the making? Their website is still active and says they are in production, but that hasn't changed in quite some time. I made a pre-order for one of the 737-300's, so I am invested financially and was looking for some updates :-)

 

Thanks all!

 

- Dennis S.

   Thornton, CO USA

[LSP_Kevin]

I received the following response to an enquiry from Neil back on 11 August:

 

Quote

Actually some exciting news! We purchased a new 3D printer a few weeks ago for evaluation and I'm extremely pleased with the quality of the parts. Our goal is to cut the long lead times for printed tooling that we've been sending out and getting back, fixing errors, resending again etc. That's a very long process and by the end of the year we hope to have at least 4-5 printers running in house to accomplish 95% of our molds, tooling and direct printed parts. The new 4K SLA small screen printers just now entering the market is making this possible, especially since our eval of the Form 3 printer was unsuccessful. It just wasn't good enough.

 

Over the next few weeks I intend to do another show and tell on various platforms about what to expect given the latest news. One thing I will mention is that it will allow us to do short runs of the model kits in custom scales(say 1:120) as well as 1:100 and 1:144 versions of the kits. Obviously the first goal is to get our 1/72 line going. I'll be printing a variety of our kit parts in various scales to show off our in house parts vs our molded and existing master parts that were printed on $250,000 machines.

 

More news very soon but we're still working hard!

 

I've since asked for an estimate on release dates, but have yet to receive a response.

 

Kev

[Dennis7423]

45 minutes ago, LSP_Kevin said:

I received the following response to an enquiry from Neil back on 11 August:

 

Thanks Kev! Sounds like there's hope still. I'll take hope. I also purchased a BPK 1/72 737-500, just because I wanted one so badly. It's a pretty nice kit, but not 3D printed nice.

 

- Dennis S.

   Thornton, CO USA

[iaf-man]

On 8/27/2021 at 1:20 AM, Dennis7423 said:

 

Thanks Kev! Sounds like there's hope still. I'll take hope. I also purchased a BPK 1/72 737-500, just because I wanted one so badly. It's a pretty nice kit, but not 3D printed nice.

 

- Dennis S.

   Thornton, CO USA

BPK doesn't make a 500,only 200 and 800

customer support/contacts are weak point here for sure

I've preordered 2 by donation fund and 2 by paypal,got back the money from paypal

still personally didn't hear anything...we hope )))

[Dennis7423]

2 hours ago, iaf-man said:

BPK doesn't make a 500,only 200 and 800

 

Must be the 800 I'm thinking of... it's buried in the stash until I can find someone to make me some masks/decals for a modern Southwest Airlines bird!

 

- Dennis S.

   Thornton, CO USA

[LSP_Kevin]

I've just received the following email update about these kits from Neil Cramer (and I'm sure many of you have, too):

 

Quote

Hey everyone, I had planned to do an update for you guys a good while ago, but things have been changing fast over the last several weeks and we finally have some good news to report. After a tough several months both personally and with the 737 project, we've finally turned the corner. I'll just hit the highlights(and lowlights) since the last update before getting into what's happening now.  I had mentioned that some our master parts, including the fuselage, had to be completely redesigned into a directly printed tool rather than creating molds from the masters for those parts. This cycle of redesigning, sending the 3d models to our preferred print company, testing the new tool, tweaking and reprinting is what has been the biggest driver for our delays, along with quality issues and long lead times. We had even looked at outsourcing the molding and casting of the original masters but decided it was far too cost prohibitive.  What ended up being less costly and better for production workflow was actually buying capable 3D printers and doing all printing in house. After our preferred print company temporarily closed after being bought by a larger company, we added a 3D printer for form/fit, testing and working out kinks in the 3D printed molds. To our surprise, with some tweaking and modifications, the printer actually matched or even exceeded the detail resolution and surface finish of the parts we got back which were printed on industrial machines. We've already added a second printer and will be adding a larger printer in the next week or so which will handle the 1/72 wings and fuselage molds.  In short, having these machines in house will allow for much faster production. Some parts will be printed directly(and have already been) while the larger parts will be cast from a 3D printed tool. When the new machine arrives and gets tweaked in, work will begin on printing the final molds and shipping the first 1-2 batches of models will follow shortly thereafter. I cant thank you all enough for your patience and bearing with us on a project that must seem to have been moving at a glacial pace. We're almost there!  All of the photos below show parts printed on our own machines in three different scales(72/100/144). What is surprising is that no modifications were needed to create the 1/144 parts, they were simply just scaled to 50%. All of the detail is present and is still crisp. As you might imagine, this will allow us to very easily produce the same 3D models across a multitude of scales. I'll have more on that in the next update, which will also announce shipping dates for the 1/72 737-200A. I'll have a follow up update after the new machine arrives and we've got the four "problem" molds printed in 1/72(they’ve been successfully tested in 144 scale as shown below) Look for more photos on my Flickr page and Facebook soon. Cheers, Neil C

Cockpit glass piece, which will be traditionally molded and copies will be cast in clear resin. Note the surface smoothness and screw detail.

Stabilizers printed in 1/72, 1/100 and 1/144 scale.

Stabilizers printed in 1/72, 1/100 and 1/144 scale.

Stabilizers printed in 1/72, 1/100 and 1/144 scale. Note: Some 25 sets of stabilizers have been already cast traditionally from a mold. Stabilizers will however be cast from new 3D printed molds in the future and may have screw detail in the lower removable panels.

Wing mold tooling in 1/144 scale.

Molds created from the tooling with a casting of the left wing.

Engines in 72, 100 and 144 scale.

Inlet cowls in 1/72 and 1/100.

Engine pylon in 1/72. Kit pylons may have screw detail added.

A 1/72 fuselage "proof" along with a 1/144 scale fuselage tool. The wing to body fairings may have screw detail in production kits.

A 1/72 scale nose section "proof" along with a 1/144 scale fuselage tool.

Fuselage "metamorphosis" from tooling(at right) to mold(lower left) to casting(upper left) in 144 scale. Note: 1/144 scale kits will likely have an integral cockpit section.

 

This sounds like a positive turn of events, and hopefully we'll see some kits shipping by the end of the year.

 

Kev

[iaf-man]

I didn't receive any mail yet

[LSP_Kevin]

A few days ago I received another long-overdue update about these kits from Neil Cramer at Aeromodl, and I'm assuming anyone else on the mailing list would have, too. But for anyone who hasn't seen it, here it is (warning, it's long):

 

Quote

It seems like I always start off by apologizing both for the lack of news and for the delays but finally we have some really good news! 

Over the past several months since the previous update, progress has been slowly inching forward at what must seem like a glacial pace to you guys. We've since added a third and fourth 3D printer, these two being larger format to handle the 1/72 wings and fuselages. Initially the 3rd machine was not getting us good parts - the step up from the 1/144 scale tests to 1/72 means the parts would be eight times larger and heavier - and unsurprisingly the machine really struggled to produce quality prints. Various print artifacts of different types had to be troubleshot and replacement parts ordered from the manufacturer, which provided only the most basic levels of support. 

After several weeks and troubleshooting and tinkering, I was able to get some decent results, but still not quite the quality desired. The 4th printer, a more basic version but similarly sized to the previous addition, was added around December. Initially I just wanted this machine to handle all the larger but less detailed direct print kit parts, but tried printing the larger fuselage pieces and noticed some of the same issues as before. Over the Christmas/New Years break with some time off from my regular job, I set out to improve all four machines, increase their reliability and print quality by various means(proper lubrication, higher quality linear bearings and rails, higher quality drive couplings and ball screw bearings, high quality separation film and resin, etc.) 

In order to help the printers by making their tasks easier, the tooling design for the fuselage pieces changed yet again in order to reduce the amount of separation force in each print layer to an absolute minimum. The fuselage 3d printed tooling, which we refer to as indirect molds, have recently hit their fifth iteration and third complete redesign. The last two tries have been extremely successful, and in the past week, the final 1/72 fuselage tooling was completed. Over the next few days the molds will be poured(and syringed and brushed in some parts) and we should have kit ready production fuselages coming out of them shortly after.

While I've been finalizing the fuselage work, Jim has taken over production of the the tail, stabilizers and engine parts so I can focus on catching up the fuselage pieces as well as the wings. This will allow us to increase tempo of production and shipping. Speaking of shipping, I feel confident stating that the first few batches will be on their way soon, possibly by mide to late May or even sooner. Once we gets kits packed, shipping notification will go out to those with slots in the first batches. 

For those wondering about the status of the -300 thru -500 models: once we are well into shipping out to the -200 customers and production is finishing on those, we will shift focus to the those variants. The build of the tooling will take a number of weeks, but much less testing/trials will be necessary as they will made with the same process as the latest, successful molds of the -200 series. 

I will be writing another update in the next couple of weeks as the last pieces of the puzzle go into place. At that time, I should have a firm date for the start of shipping, along with information about decals, when the 1/100 and 1/144 kits will be available for order, and news about a gift showing our gratitude for being so patient!

 

There were also some progress photos with descriptions, but I've left those out.

 

Kev

[iaf-man]

5 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

A few days ago I received another long-overdue update about these kits from Neil Cramer at Aeromodl, and I'm assuming anyone else on the mailing list would have, too. But for anyone who hasn't seen it, here it is (warning, it's long):

 

 

There were also some progress photos with descriptions, but I've left those out.

 

Kev

Thanks for the update,I've received nothing

[Dennis7423]

Thanks Kev, I too did not receive this e-mail, so it's appreciated.

 

- Dennis S.

  Thornton, CO USA

[LSP_Kevin]

Has anybody seen, heard, or received any updates on these kits since my last post in April?

 

Kev

[iaf-man]

19 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Has anybody seen, heard, or received any updates on these kits since my last post in April?

 

Kev

none

[Dennis7423]

Negative. Checked their website the other day, it's still active, says kits are "in production", but no one has received anything from what I can tell. Doesn't look like its been updated since we last talked about it in April.

 

- Dennis S.

   Mount Juliet, TN USA

[LSP_Kevin]

So, 6 months on, and no word from anyone involved with this project. I've just sent Neil Cramer an email, enquiring about the status of this project. I think I speak for all of us when I say that it's not the waiting that bothers us, it's the lack of communication and updates. I'm still hopeful we'll eventually see something, but at this stage I'd have to say BPK is your best option for 1/72 scale 737 kits.

 

Kev

[Tnarg]

Sad to see these photos of what might have been... almost like seeing the pics of the Handley Page from WNW or wanting that Hansa Brandenburg Starstrutter.

 

As Princess Aurora said, "Someday my plane will come" (names changed to protect the kitbuilders).

 

Tnarg