Hi,

This another thing that I've been pondering popped in my mind and now ask you.
Why do so many older kits have raised panel lines?

Is it because they were easier to do, or because the moulding technology wasn't advanced enough, or what?
I'd think that raised lines are harder to do than recessed, assuming you first build a master, then make the moulds from it.
Or was the detail perhaps carved to the mold itself, resulting in raised detail in the mouldings?

Raised panel lines have to be much easier from a tooling stand point. To make raised line on the part you need a recessed line in the mold. I would imagine you could almost hand scribe them in the tooling with a carbide scriber. To get recessed panel lines you need small raised ridges in the mold, which requires some really dicey C&C machining.

Shaun

/I supervise a pattern shop in a foundry...

Ditto, just remember everything is backwards in the molds, raised lines would be a piece of cake next to recessed.

What they said. "Q"

Thanks, this cleared up the issue. I had this feeling that raised lines were easier to do 'back in the days'. So they really had to carve the molds directly, without masters? I'd think it was easier to make a master, then make molds from them, but I guess the usual modern casting materials and techniques just weren't there yet.

Injection molding uses (typically) some kind of Steel for the mold...... not like it's easily carveable..... CNC maybe a good carbide scribe... Lots of work!!

It has nothing to do with modern casting methods, but rather that injection tooling has always been steel and there are no masters around that are going to take those temperatures to allow you to pour a steel mould over a master. Modern injection kits are also hogged out of tool-steel billets and then polished to get that super smooth surface just like old kits. Knock-off cheap kits (like some Chinese and some Academy kits) use an existing kit as a pattern and then pantograph them, which is a fancy way of saying that a machine traces the 3D shape of the master and cuts it into the steel. However this almost always results in some loss of detail as the pantograph isn't as precise as doing things from drawings (old days) or CAD models (current method).

It's no coincidence that a lot of the new Dragon releases have computer generated graphics of the new kit as part of the advertising. Dragon has had to make the CAD models anyway to generate the tooling paths for the CNC mills that cut the tools and so are just using a cool-looking existing resource to make the advertising look hi-tech.

Paul