Cost to "re" manufacture

[Saito2 2819]

I asked a side question in the topic about the price of rereleases and it might have gotten overlooked by the passionate discussion in that thread. I'd like to know, from those that would have better knowledge than I, (particularly in injection molding) what cost could be incurred by reintroducing a kit using molds that have been out of service since the 80's/90's. It is not my intention to start debate of any kind, I'm simply interested in the steps and possible hurdles to overcome when bringing back an old kit if the molds were indeed stored away and not destroyed.

I had basic ideas that old molds might become damaged in some way by improper storage. Possibly they could require some type of investment to refurbish? Possibly, they may be unusable and require to be re-made? I could see a lot of money being spent in development if the cars were re-tooled using modern methods like the Kyosho re-releases. Do existing, but old, molds still fit/work with current machines if using basically the same plastic types?

One person brought up an interesting point I hadn't considered. Simply putting the old molds into service to create a re-release represents a risk as that "ties up" a machine that could be making a tried and true money maker like a TT02 or something. Again, not looking for argument or debate. I'm just honestly interested in how old product get made again. 

[SupraChrgd82 842]

That's a good question.  I have no input regarding the topic, but a peek inside the factory where the parts are made is interesting to see;  

https://visor.ph/culture/inside-the-tamiya-factory-in-the-philippines/

https://timeattackmanila.com/featured/exclusive-look-inside-tamiya-factory-cebu/

 

 

 

 

 

[87lc2 774]

I work in the automotive aftermarket and we build quite a few molds annually.  I think the biggest thing with RC kits is that there are so many molds required to make one kit.  All it takes is an issue with one tool to stop the whole thing.  Of course, molds can be repaired or rebuilt but if the kit was not a hot seller then all it would take is one major issue with one tool to kill that model.  All tools require care and maintenance, but even that is not enough to prevent catastrophic failure at times.  

Back to your question - If all required molds are still around then it really wouldn't be that big of a deal to get them going again.  Typically they just require a good once over and polish and can be put back into service.  We have molds that are only used every 5-7 years and they don't require much more than a cavity polish to be put back into service.  The challenge with RC models would be keeping all of the necessary molds needed.  I would think Tamiya is as well organized as any molding facility, but that's a lot of molds to hold on to.  Machine time is definitley another thing to consider.  All injection facilities operate on a production schedule, and fitting in all of the molds required to re-produce a kit would be a pretty big ivenstment of valuable machine run time.  

Other than slow sales, I think tool failure (that's not financially feasible to fix) is probably the #1 reason that RC models go out of production and never come back.  I have often wondered if a lot of the Tamiya re-releases were originally discontinued due to tool failure and then at some point they thought it was worth rebuilding or repairing whichever tool had an issue and boom, it's back in production. 

This is just my opinion based on my experience.  Obiously what I do is a bit different than RC in that our products are mostly self-contained (2-3 molds per product max, most of the time just one multi-cavity mold), but I think it applies is some sense.  

[87lc2 774]

If I remember correctly, the mold for Clod Buster tires went bad sometime in the early-mid 2000s, maybe around the time of the metallic edition???  Can't remember all the details but the Clod was out of production for a year or two due to this.  Obviously this was worth Tamiya making a new tool and they did.  I personally prefer the old tooling, for some reason they need to use a ton of mold release to get these to release and it's a pain to clean off.  Just bought another new set a month or so ago and had to saok them in Simple Green for a day then scrub to get it all off.

[Wheel_Nut 128]

It probably answers the question why production runs are limited.    When Tamiya run the injection moulding / dies for a particular kit, they would make enough for the production run they have planned.  The unit cost for each plastic sprue will typically be very low, but a lot of the cost is in the time needed to change over dies, do maintenance and also testing the setup between production of different mouldings.    The warehouse probably doesn't have space to keep high stock levels as that would be costly as well.      I don't know how big an issue tooling cost is these days.   AFAIK the tooling cost would be about 10% of what it used to be back in the 80s due to far better technology and automation.  I don't think the unavailability of tooling is a major obstacle if there is sufficient demand for the product, but again it takes time to test-run and revise new injection moulding tooling.

Its pretty obvious that Tamiya don't plan to sell a lot of spare parts.   It seems like they use the entire production to go in the kits, and when that is finished (I guess) there won't be any more until they decide to do another re-release.

[Manix92 118]

The biggest problem with moulds out of production since the 80-90's is where will they have been stored and what state is the corrosion in. Sure when you put a steel tool away you will spray it will mould protection BUT when we are talking that long it would have been needed to be out and re-protected several times.

A badly rusted tool can be more or less scrap.

[Lee76 612]

If you’re going back to pre 1990’s then there were very few 3D CAD users. Google will tell you it’s existed since the 1960’s or earlier, but even F1 teams in the 1990’s were still using mostly 2D software like ME10. This meant that there is a certain amount of ‘interpretation’ when a tool maker gets hold of drawings, especially for organic forms, so moulding and casting especially, different manufacturers with the same drawing would produce subtly different parts. So problem 1 :- manufacturing parts from original drawing and 3D interpretation.

To manufacture in large qty. and quickly, a company may well use external manufacturing companies perhaps several, as businesses change and working relationships change other issues occur. A foundry for example may not want to store all your tooling, (unless you’re paying them to) they may have made it all but it is still owned by you.. now sometimes when you stop a run you ask for the tooling back. The manufacturer may think you’ll give it to a competitor, or you’ll extract some IP from it they’re sensitive about, so sometimes your tools accidentally fall off the shelf.. So problem 2.. external sourcing.

I have several sand scorcher bodies, the quality is very variable, thin sections, pits, offsets.. I don’t know for sure but I’d imagine the manufacturing process isn’t fully automated, so there’s a worker demolding, cleaning and reassembling the tools, this is where some tool wear/damage will be occurring. When the run’s finished they need storing correctly, anti-corrit etc... Problem 3.. people are lazy!

Then there’s materials, if you ask a tool maker to produce a mould, he’s ask how quick and how many.. they might use tooling block, aluminium or steel, they might produce a really good master lock it in a vault and take splash moulds, or they might just wing it with crude facsimiles from a photo.. The designers of the tooling will produce tools of varying quality. All of these factors affect shelf life.

So re-runs of anything vintage is very risky, If you were to make one now, a decent model, 3D CAD/CAM part and tool design, proper understanding of GDT and modern inspection and quality control, you could pretty much send the job to anywhere in the world and get the same part, you could make new tools every time and still get the same parts. We use CFD to work out the flow of metal/plastic though the tool and thermal modelling to check the cooling rates, the tools and parts can be x-ray examined and 3D scanned for quality, you can manufacture and measure to 0.0001mm accuracy with some processes! Our rule of thumb is a fixture should be 1/10th the accuracy  tolerance of the final part.

I’m just waiting for the day 3d printing quality is as good as the ABS moulding and I can run off what I want and no tools required

Most of my experience is in automotive casting, cyl heads etc, investment casting small complex parts, laser sintering and composite design, but I think all of the above would cross over to RC blow moulds and injection moulds.

I’m not sure I’ve answered the original question.. Soz..

 

[Gazzalene 95]

Tamiya have been a "Top" brand for many many years. Their static "plastic" kits were knocking spots of others decades ago. I Would imagine that T knows how to store and maintain moulds due to the cost of them. Also I would think changes moulds after runs OR maintainence was down to a fine art and done quickly.

Again the plastic parts are only part of the kit/cost. I have spent many years in the static model side and know modellers who have insight into the manufacture of kits.I was very surprised years ago when I was told about the break down cost of a kit,  plastic parts,instructions,decals and box, that was not the correct order!

[moffman 2373]

14 hours ago, Saito2 said:

I asked a side question in the topic about the price of rereleases and it might have gotten overlooked by the passionate discussion in that thread. I'd like to know, from those that would have better knowledge than I, (particularly in injection molding) what cost could be incurred by reintroducing a kit using molds that have been out of service since the 80's/90's. It is not my intention to start debate of any kind, I'm simply interested in the steps and possible hurdles to overcome when bringing back an old kit if the molds were indeed stored away and not destroyed.

I had basic ideas that old molds might become damaged in some way by improper storage. Possibly they could require some type of investment to refurbish? Possibly, they may be unusable and require to be re-made? I could see a lot of money being spent in development if the cars were re-tooled using modern methods like the Kyosho re-releases. Do existing, but old, molds still fit/work with current machines if using basically the same plastic types?

One person brought up an interesting point I hadn't considered. Simply putting the old molds into service to create a re-release represents a risk as that "ties up" a machine that could be making a tried and true money maker like a TT02 or something. Again, not looking for argument or debate. I'm just honestly interested in how old product get made again. 

Its good to read about this sort of thing👍 I have no knowledge of anything about different molds (only the annoying stuff that materialises on your bread after you've eaten half of it and not realised) but it's very interesting that they can indeed be fixed and used again! It dispels the myth that certain mold got used for different things! 

[futureworks 328]

28 minutes ago, moffman said:

Its good to read about this sort of thing👍 I have no knowledge of anything about different molds (only the annoying stuff that materialises on your bread after you've eaten half of it and not realised) but it's very interesting that they can indeed be fixed and used again! It dispels the myth that certain mold got used for different things! 

Just what I was thinking, this has been highly informative for me, so thanks to @Saito2 for kicking this off, and for the very interesting contributions from other members. 👍👍👍

[MadInventor 2928]

The video link @SupraChrgd82 was very interesting. I was quite surprised at the amount of manual handling going on. It shows that it's not just about mouldings when reproducing a model. Although I did notice that most of the stuff they were working on was pre-painted / pre-assembled models.

 

[BuggyGuy 79]

Great thread, very interesting stuff.

The videos from Team Xray are pretty good if your interested in how stuff goes together and the machines used for production, this series has episodes for the manufacture of various components and is very interesting set of videos:

https://youtu.be/rXZCx9n5y40

Xray are probably the only manufacturer to meet or exceed the quality of TRF kits IMO, so probably slightly different from high volume ABS moulded parts on a typical models production - but their kits are very similar construction to the TRF420 etc. 

[moffman 2373]

I always think when I'm building my rc kits is how much design and engineering has gone into every single part including molding sprues! Like the parts in the sprues that have to snap off completely clean and the parts that you need to cut off the excess all deliberately designed to do that! Someone has sat and designed that process? That's what I find fascinating? This type of design/engineering which is normally ignored does a big job in making the models we make more enjoyable without us really giving it a second thought!

[markbt73 3186]

41 minutes ago, moffman said:

I always think when I'm building my rc kits is how much design and engineering has gone into every single part including molding sprues! Like the parts in the sprues that have to snap off completely clean and the parts that you need to cut off the excess all deliberately designed to do that! Someone has sat and designed that process? That's what I find fascinating? This type of design/engineering which is normally ignored does a big job in making the models we make more enjoyable without us really giving it a second thought!

Not only that, but plastic shrinks as it cools. It's a predictable amount, but the mold designer has to take it into account and make the molds larger than the final pieces will be. And do it consistently across several different molds for sprues that all have to fit precisely together in the end. And in the case of many Tamiya models, across different types of plastic that might have different shrink rates. Even something as simple as a Grasshopper represents an incredible amount of design and engineering work just to make the molds.

Even more impressive when you consider that it was done nearly 40 years ago, long before CAD technology reached a level where it was affordable for the toy market. And that's for a $60 (back then) RC model that's 16 inches long. Now translate all that to a tiny 1/24 scale plastic model kit, with at least as many parts (though all one type of plastic), that will languish on shelves if it costs more than $5-10 (back then). It's an even more impressive feat.

And don't forget the box and instructions; no DTP software back then either. No Photoshop to retouch pictures. No pulling CAD files to make the instruction diagrams.

I absolutely think about it. I look at my shelf of vintage RC vehicles, and the several shelves of vintage static kits, and marvel at the thousands of hours of work that went into the creation of each of them, for something that is nothing more than an amusement, a completely frivolous luxury item.

Back to the original point, I don't know if Tamiya is still using old molds for the re-issues, but I really hope they are. That would give them an air of respectability that I think a lot of us don't afford the re-issues; we sort of treat them as "expendable" in a way that the originals aren't. Well, if (for example) the re-re Lunchbox body sitting on the table next to me is, in fact, from the original 1987 mold, then it's closer to a re-mastered album than an all-new recording. And that deserves respect.

[moffman 2373]

Yeah I remember looking at a photo of a designer hand painting the box art for one of the tamiya rc models (I think it was the Porsche 959?) Can you imagine the time and skills that takes? I wonder what the process was to convert that into a mass production box back in the day?

[Saito2 2819]

6 minutes ago, moffman said:

Yeah I remember looking at a photo of a designer hand painting the box art for one of the tamiya rc models (I think it was the Porsche 959?) Can you imagine the time and skills that takes? I wonder what the process was to convert that into a mass production box back in the day?

I used to study that exact photo as a kid. I wanted more than anything to be able to produce artwork of that caliber. I asked a professional artist (college degree and all) a few years back who taught here and there on the side if he thought he could help me reaching that goal. After showing him some boxart examples he was blown away by what Tamiya artist could achieve. If my hands still work by then, its a retirement goal now.

Thank you all for the detailed responses. Its was precisely what I was after. The infinite well of knowledge of Tamiyaclub members strikes again. 

[mud4fun 1397]

I used to be an Industrial Engineer working in production and industrial engineering departments in a heavy engineering company. My father also owns a medium sized engineering business. So I have some experience.

I used to program CNC milling machines and lathes including Toshiba BMC80 multi pallets and Swedturn 4 axis lathes as well as programming automated robotic welding machines and automated presses.

In my experience it used to cost more to setup a machine than it cost to produce the small batch. The same was true of injection moulding.

So for example, we would cost machines at a rate that covered their maintenance, service, consumable costs (oil, belts etc) and their capital right off costs plus their operator labour costs.

When setting up for a new batch we would have to attach the fixtures/jigs to the pallets on the machining centre, get the operator to 'prove out' the program used to machine the components, find and install all the relevant tooling into the machines carousel etc. It would typically take 2 hours to setup a machine for a new batch. So if we operated a rate of £100 per hour it would cost £200 before we had even machined one item. If we did a batch of 100 components they would have to cost at least £2 each to just break even, However if we produced 1000 components the cost per component came down to 20 pence per item. Thus it made far more sense for us to produce large batches of components as the consumable costs (carbide inserts, drills, taps etc) were negligible and machine operating costs also became minor. Our customers wanted lower prices so we designed our products to use modular parts with great commonality between products to allow us to run large batches through the workshop with the knowledge that we would not be left with large stocks sat on the shelf.

So it used to be a fine balance when deciding when to run off some new batches of parts. It would be a careful assessment of how many we had left in stock, how fast the stock was turning over and demand from the business. We were not that interested in making profits from parts, mainly because the main products we made were used by the likes of MOD and other military organisations around the world. It was more important to keep the coatomer happy so they would give us repeat orders than to make a profit on some small parts used to maintain those products. We often ran at a loss on parts in order to retain contracts for the main products.

 

[SuperChamp82 484]

+1 to most of the above but moulding has also changed massively over the years.

Numbers vary depending on industry / application but the general rule of thumb is c. 750 new moulding materials emerge every year - and some are v clever  (with different fluidity / material thickness vs pressure applied) allowing tensile strength in thin areas when done properly. 

No one really knows how Tamiya mould things in Japan or the Philippines - but I’d be stunned if the cost savings inherent in new techniques haven’t been taken on board ?

Especially in lexan. 

And, if so, it would add to other unit production costs mentioned above - reinforcing all that’s already been said about the economics short production runs. 

Whether laser scanning moulds to create reliable CDM data and commercial 3D printing both become cheap + good enough to help is a completely separate question ... although fwiw I suspect they will provided Tamiya don’t bore loyal volume to death ! 

[Manix92 118]

8 hours ago, SuperChamp82 said:

+1 to most of the above but moulding has also changed massively over the years.

Numbers vary depending on industry / application but the general rule of thumb is c. 750 new moulding materials emerge every year - and some are v clever  (with different fluidity / material thickness vs pressure applied) allowing tensile strength in thin areas when done properly. 

No one really knows how Tamiya mould things in Japan or the Philippines - but I’d be stunned if the cost savings inherent in new techniques haven’t been taken on board ?

Especially in lexan. 

And, if so, it would add to other unit production costs mentioned above - reinforcing all that’s already been said about the economics short production runs. 

Whether laser scanning moulds to create reliable CDM data and commercial 3D printing both become cheap + good enough to help is a completely separate question ... although fwiw I suspect they will provided Tamiya don’t bore loyal volume to death ! 

They aren't using anything amazing, most of the tooling is pretty simple - the caveat that very few tools usually have so many impressions in the normal world and the runner system will be difficult to balance. Hence why there is some problems with repeatability and............. flash.........tool wear.

I'm not 100% sure what year pre-hardend P20 steel came on the market but it was probably available in the 80's and def in the 90s, they would still make the tool out of that today. Unless they went to something like H13 steel fully hardened for glass filled on long mould runs.

Sparking, wire erosion, and CNC were all there in the 80's for toolmakers - it just was a longer process. Tool quality was as good then as now the big difference is you paid for it. There is a simple answer to this just remember how much Tamiya kit was back then compared to todays money.

 

On a side note - When injection moulding and trials have finished the moulder will produce a setting sheet for the mould machine, also there will be data for QC on critical dimensions that need to be checked. They will have reference mouldings and check the weight before continuing with moulding.

At the end of the day this really hasn't changed from the 80's either just more and more of it has been digitised.

[Manix92 118]

20 hours ago, Lee76 said:

If you’re going back to pre 1990’s then there were very few 3D CAD users. Google will tell you it’s existed since the 1960’s or earlier, but even F1 teams in the 1990’s were still using mostly 2D software like ME10. This meant that there is a certain amount of ‘interpretation’ when a tool maker gets hold of drawings, especially for organic forms, so moulding and casting especially, different manufacturers with the same drawing would produce subtly different parts. So problem 1 :- manufacturing parts from original drawing and 3D interpretation.

To manufacture in large qty. and quickly, a company may well use external manufacturing companies perhaps several, as businesses change and working relationships change other issues occur. A foundry for example may not want to store all your tooling, (unless you’re paying them to) they may have made it all but it is still owned by you.. now sometimes when you stop a run you ask for the tooling back. The manufacturer may think you’ll give it to a competitor, or you’ll extract some IP from it they’re sensitive about, so sometimes your tools accidentally fall off the shelf.. So problem 2.. external sourcing.

I have several sand scorcher bodies, the quality is very variable, thin sections, pits, offsets.. I don’t know for sure but I’d imagine the manufacturing process isn’t fully automated, so there’s a worker demolding, cleaning and reassembling the tools, this is where some tool wear/damage will be occurring. When the run’s finished they need storing correctly, anti-corrit etc... Problem 3.. people are lazy!

Then there’s materials, if you ask a tool maker to produce a mould, he’s ask how quick and how many.. they might use tooling block, aluminium or steel, they might produce a really good master lock it in a vault and take splash moulds, or they might just wing it with crude facsimiles from a photo.. The designers of the tooling will produce tools of varying quality. All of these factors affect shelf life.

So re-runs of anything vintage is very risky, If you were to make one now, a decent model, 3D CAD/CAM part and tool design, proper understanding of GDT and modern inspection and quality control, you could pretty much send the job to anywhere in the world and get the same part, you could make new tools every time and still get the same parts. We use CFD to work out the flow of metal/plastic though the tool and thermal modelling to check the cooling rates, the tools and parts can be x-ray examined and 3D scanned for quality, you can manufacture and measure to 0.0001mm accuracy with some processes! Our rule of thumb is a fixture should be 1/10th the accuracy  tolerance of the final part.

I’m just waiting for the day 3d printing quality is as good as the ABS moulding and I can run off what I want and no tools required

Most of my experience is in automotive casting, cyl heads etc, investment casting small complex parts, laser sintering and composite design, but I think all of the above would cross over to RC blow moulds and injection moulds.

I’m not sure I’ve answered the original question.. Soz..

 

Quite a lot of the toolmakers were using 3D since the early 90's, I started dropping AutoCAD myself in 1995. Not picked up 2D other than modifying stuff since about 1997.

The thing was in the early days of 3D CAD/CAM you didn't do the whole tool design on 3D because it would take too long. So you did it in 2D CAD and then just did the 3D surfaces on 3D CAD.

In the 90's you were even getting SLA models done, especially on automotive stuff because the tooling could carry the cost. It was really expensive then though.

[Lee76 612]

4 hours ago, Manix92 said:

Quite a lot of the toolmakers were using 3D since the early 90's, I started dropping AutoCAD myself in 1995. Not picked up 2D other than modifying stuff since about 1997.

 I did say pre 90’s... I love a good CAD chat, walk down memory lane  I was an AutoCAD user my self for a number of years, it was much easier to pick up than ME10, but when the ‘3D’ part came out, think it was autodesk mechanical desktop, it was pretty rubbish.. I don’t think you could really model anything on there you couldn’t make from 2D projected views.. When it came to proper 3D CAD and surfacing, nothing came close to CATIA, we started on V4 in about 1998/9 after the aircraft industry pioneered it. Trouble was you needed a beast of a machine to do anything complex. We used silicon graphics works stations which were more than £20k each.. can’t remember what the first one was called, but the second one faster model was an upgraded fuel... I vaguely remember having to do some command line modifications to tell it how much RAM to use for graphics and maths to get it work for large models.. We were cutting edge at the time.. and man... was it slow going, plenty of screen breaks though, I’d set a drawing to update and have about 30 minutes free to go get a tea! Anyone that says they were working effectively for large complex organic parts pre 90’s either had no concept of time or thinks very prismatically.. When we migrated to Catia V5, you could throw out the Silicone graphics machine and do everything on a normal PC.. Maxed out of course, but still something around £2k would be 5 times faster than the SG machines a few years older, to me, and it might be nostalgia, the late 90’s early 2000’s were really leap years in PC advances.. literally what you thought was state of the art would be double speed a month later.. Hey I just bought the latest PC.. gets it home 30 minutes later to find out it’s now obsolete . We were running CFD models back in early 2000’s we’d have to send off to a supercomputer and take about 2 months to return.. these can now be done in a matter of hours on our own cluster or a day on my desktop.. 

aaaaaanndddd.... I’ve taken the thread off topic.. very very sorry... but it’s been a nice trip down memory lane.. kids today... coming into my job with this as the starting place... don’t know how easy they have it... my first day on the job there were still drawing boards and filing cabinets full of something called ‘paper’...One of the best drawings I saw was a casting drawing for a water pump volute, the time and effort required to do this by hand in multiple sections with a set of French curves..  it was incredible that pre CAD we were still drawing the way Brunel would have been.. though without BS8888 or ISO standards... (not fact checked that bit,  he probably wrote BS8888  )

[Jonathon Gillham 3184]

23 minutes ago, Lee76 said:

 aaaaaanndddd.... I’ve taken the thread off topic.. very very sorry... but it’s been a nice trip down memory lane.. kids today... coming into my job with this as the starting place... don’t know how easy they have it... 

So i hope that you help the kids these days rather than tell them they have it easy. Imagine being a teenager now with social media etc and how different life would be if we had that BiTD and the dumb stuff we did that would now be immortalized on the internet...

I just find that people these days are quick to blame young people for anything (often that happened before they were born) and really, they have it harder than we ever had it!

[Lee76 612]

7 minutes ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

So i hope that you help the kids these days rather than tell them they have it easy. Imagine being a teenager now with social media etc and how different life would be if we had that BiTD and the dumb stuff we did that would now be immortalized on the internet...

I’m on both sides of this fence... yes, of course I help anyone regardless of age, to the best of my ability.. but will I tease the young grads and tell them they have it easy, demand they bring in new starter cakes.. first mistake cakes.. etc.  Of course yes!  I’m gen.X so it’s a good vantage point to dip into the boomer vs millennial debates often brought up  

I got a degree when it was paid for by the government, I got my job break through a series of fortunate events.. we get thousands of applicants a year, all expected to be 1st class straight A candidates. I often tell the ones that I train up that I would have zero chance of passing the entry requirements and I rely on them to help me with things like macro writing and picking up new software as much as they rely on me to show them how to design things properly. The problem with our recruitment policy is that it does lean now towards some absolute arrogant douchebag personalities... so they can sometimes be pretty hard to teach...