The other night a thought occured to me that might be beneficial to both the modeller and the kit manufactuers.
I was thinking about the effectiveness of returning the parts sprues to kit manufactuers. The way I saw it was that it could be reground, melted and reinjected into the molds. Or even as a mix filler with new pellets. I believe that it would be a cost savings to the manufactuers that ultimatley could get passed on to the hobby at large by reduced kit prices or atleast a way for the manufactuers to spend more on mold development, resulting in better kits(?)
I understand that each kit manufacturer has a slightly different “formula” for thier styrene, but keeping the spures seperate shouldn’t be a problem. I also understand that there would be certai offset costs, but once the process is in place I think that it would end up paying for itself.
It’s a great idea, but not a new one, unfortunately. [8)]
If I recall correctly the plastic, once used for making a kit, is no longer useful for that same process again. I may be wrong, but for some reason it sticks in my mind that you can’t recycle this stuff to make more kits. Perhaps if Toad sees this, he can shed some light for us.
This same question was brought up as a question when I toured a model kit manufacturer. They said a bonding agent was applied to the plastic during the mixing process. To recycle old plastic the bonding agent would have to be taken out to prevent the plastic from becoming too hard or brittle. It is much cheeper to use un cured plastic than to recycle old.
hi i have a different way to recyle my left over sprue. 1- stretch it to form filler rods for gaps , 2- remove with a flat file the back of the plastic from the numbered parts area till i can see through , then cut out numbers for use as casting numbers and letters , 3- use to build up open frame work for ground work in dioramas and cover in mod rock , light and very versitile .esp if used for creating berms , trenches ect , cheers ian