What happened to the molds? It’s the Illuminati. They use a device built by Leonardo da Vinci, using the treasure hoarded by the Templars, and they shuffle the molds around from McMinnville, Oregon to Area 51 to Tunguska, Siberia, using black helicopters piloted by cybermen who belong to the New World Order, receiving their pay in ameros backed by the as-yet clandestine North American Union.
Take the red pill and wake up!
I don’t know about the rumors, but from working in the automotive tooling industry, if a mold is not stored properly, it can deteriorate very fast just from things like humidity. I’ve seen a mirror polished mold get rusty in the length of time it took to truck it from Michigan to Utah. If a mold sits around for a long time, the pitting from rust can get so deep that the mold cannot be salvaged. By the time you get the rust out, the dimentions, and shape change so much thats its pointless. And lets face it,…these molds were from the 60’s and 70’s!
One thing to think about, if the original model pressing did not sell that well, I doubt the model company would want to take the time to update the box art, instructions, runa few thousand decal sets and push it out the door. Just becuase the moulds are there does not mean they are automatically profit makers.
I just wonder how many actual C-5 kits, Raiden kits in 1/32 and the like actually sold the first time around?
One other thing, I remember when I was a kid, my dad bought me the 1/32 Raiden kit only because he could not find me the Zero kit, that I really wanted
Here is my version, from an “insider”:
http://www.largescaleplanes.com/reviews/Revell/Ki-61.html
Just to make it clear, the molds were going to Revell/Lodela (Mexico) from Japan, not to Japan. These were not Revell/US molds, but Revell/Takara, the only 1/32 efforts of Revell there as far as I know.
Rato Marczak
I found a picture of the mold for the ancient Revell USS Missouri battleship-it’s not that big, all things considered, but looks like it could be heavy, and this is a relatively small kit with a small quantity of parts. (See photo below).
I think more than anything the size of the mold depends on the size of the injection molding machine, with molds bigger than 30 inches in length taking a very large machine. A pretty big producer of R/C props is a friend of mine, and he had to get a bigger machine when he started making 24 inch propellers. It take a big machine to press large molds together at the pressures it takes to keep them from spreading. Mucho Dinero for the big one.
Yes, it’s heavy. The “injected” area is much smaller than the rest. This is necessary to provide the mold with sufficient stiffness to not warp during the injection, that is, withstand with very high pressures. And both halves must be roughly of the same size, so that the temperature induced dilatation remains approximately the same for both.