We have all done this. You want to cut a vey small piece from your sprue, and you notice its connected to the runner in 3 or more areas, you pick one..and snap..your little piece just broke in half . So, how do you decide what sprue to cut first to minimize damage?.

Having a formal college degree in Mechanical Engineering, I thought..Hey..I can actually apply my engineering education to modeling. I think one trick is to take a close look at the attachment points.

Its the bending stress when cutting the part that leads to failure. Simply pulling on a part in question will not cause as much damage to the part. So with that, I would seek to find the THICKEST sprue connection and cut that FIRST, then trim remaining connections.

Although my theory sometimes holds..Sometimes it does not. Id like to hear what other are doing to reduce breaking pieces off..Any ideas?

I sometimes cut it a long way from the part. Let's make an illustration:

===---[]--===

ok, the "[]" is the kit part, the "---" is the closest plastic to the kit part and the "==" is the larger part that connects to the rest of the tree.

What I do, I simply cut "==" this part instead of "---" so to minimize damage. Then shave it off.

I usually cut alla of the parts off the sprue using a tool meant to cut electronic components and I cannot remember to brak a single part since I use it...
Ciao

If I feel a part might break I usually try to cut the part and surrounding sprue from the sprue frame. Then I trim the part away as usual and have never had a part break on me yet. I hope you can understand that :-) Cheers Kevin