Locating pins

[pigsty]

You often read in reviews something like "this is a limited-run kit so naturally it has no locating pins" and then you're left to bodge the thing together as best you can.

 

Why?

 

I understand how some kits are limited-run.  But a locating pin is just like any other piece of shaped plastic: either it sticks out a bit, or the other half is a little ding.  They have to be opposite each other or they won't work.  That describes almost every paired part of every model kit ever - especially the panel lines or the openings.  And so much work goes into those parts, which of course is what we pay for.  Yet, apparently, something about locating pins makes them impossible to include if your mould isn't made of the most durable material; or possibly, after all the design work for the rest of the kit, a few more matched features are too expensive to add.

 

I'm not really getting it.  Does anyone else?

[dogsbody]

It's probably adds that much more difficulty to make the molds with the locating pins and matching holes. Which adds to the cost of the molds, which is then added to the cost of the kits. I'm not over concerned by the lack of pins. I've built old kits from the 60's and 70's that needed some or all the pins removed just to get the parts together. Some people just need to urinate & whimper about such things. Others just don't give a large rodent's backside.

 

 

Chris

[fewr9fkr9595]

6 minutes ago, dogsbody said:

Some people just need to urinate & whimper about such things. Others just don't give a large rodent's backside.

 

Ooooosh! 

 

Not laughed like that for a while. 

 

Cheers mate  

[Rob G]

I think that you'll find it has more to do with the actual mechanics of the injection moulding process than the ability of the maker. Small, blind ended details take a lot of pressure to force plastic into, and the limited run moulds from the past were often made of resin, which is much cheaper and quicker to work with than steel, but can't take the pressure that steel can. Hence, the design team could put fine panel lines and long thin detail parts onto the sprues, which weren't difficult to get plastic into, but the alignment pins weren't possible.

 

There's also the question of the injection machinery - most of the limited run kits of the past hailed from the old Soviet Bloc, where high pressure equipment just wasn't available, let alone affordable, for something as trivial as a model kit. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, more and more of those small Eastern European kit makers have turned to 'proper' moulding equipment, and are now making kits on a par with the best of the world.

 

No doubt someone with actual injection moulding experience will be along to correct me, but that's my understanding of the situation from many years of magazine (and now internet) reading.