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1/48 F-104 best option and opinions sought


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4 hours ago, PouK9 said:

I watched and watched and watched, nearly blown my eyes out. But - or the photos not showing "The Shape Issue" or this issue is not so prominent. Maybe red lines could help me see? 🙂

I am not the best red line handler, the intake duct "bulge" on the fuselage ends too early on the Kinetic kit.

 

Kinetic.jpg.0de7f370d94e373737e094fd5ca74ed9.jpgr...F-104.jpeg.568c6b0f751b74826e855273d083a2bd.jpeg.066e9a53fac8196ccbc2160a174cd7b7.jpeg

Edited by Thomas
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19 hours ago, falcon91352 said:

Yes, the mistake in the transistion from the engine ducts to the wings is obvious, but it is not that fundamental making the kit worse or unbuildable. I only have realized it with the direct comparison from the original and model photo. Apart from that, probably I never took notice from it. Anyway, it can be remedied with a bit of sandpaper and putty without too much work.

 

I just realized, that Kinetic will rerelease the F-5A kit in 1:48 soon. It is a pleasant little kit and hopefully, they will improve the quality of the clear parts in the new edition.

 

If you meant the flow marks in the clear parts, they have already fixed it in later productions years ago, the mold has been modified to have only one entry/attachment to the clear parts to avoid multiple flows coming together, so the parts looks perfect now.

 

It's really great to hear that Kinetic is going to fix this issue on the F-104 kit too.👍

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Yes but unfortunately the G version which I would imagine will be the most popular out of all the possible variants, will not be getting rectified. Despite what some say it is not an easy fix.

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1 hour ago, scotthldr said:

Yes but unfortunately the G version which I would imagine will be the most popular out of all the possible variants, will not be getting rectified. Despite what some say it is not an easy fix.

 

Haha, it seems that people who are not bothered by an issue always tend to say it's an easy fix.

 

I admit that I'm not interested in the G version, but Raymond has a point, it's a business after all. I can see that the issue doesn't seem to bother many people/doesn't seem to be a deal breaker for many, so it may not be worth it, as it wouldn't bring additional sales to balance the additional cost(They probably need to retool the entire fuselage or even the entire sprue to fix it, I have no idea). 

 

It's extremely rare and refreshing to see a manufacturer to openly admit the issue with their kits(or to have communication at all), that make me confident that they will be able to learn from it and get better. By the way that's particularly the opposite to an other manufacturer, who seems to have single out and cemented Kinetic as their nemesis 😉    

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1 hour ago, delide said:

 

Haha, it seems that people who are not bothered by an issue always tend to say it's an easy fix.

 

I admit that I'm not interested in the G version, but Raymond has a point, it's a business after all. I can see that the issue doesn't seem to bother many people/doesn't seem to be a deal breaker for many, so it may not be worth it, as it wouldn't bring additional sales to balance the additional cost(They probably need to retool the entire fuselage or even the entire sprue to fix it, I have no idea). 

 

It's extremely rare and refreshing to see a manufacturer to openly admit the issue with their kits(or to have communication at all), that make me confident that they will be able to learn from it and get better. By the way that's particularly the opposite to an other manufacturer, who seems to have single out and cemented Kinetic as their nemesis 😉    

Dear delide,

 

The retooling of the small place is same as new tooled F-104A/C, so unless it has a strong reason, we rather put the investment to other new item than retool it. 

 

Yes, I believe same as every maker, they do have something omitted, for us, nose, canopy, intake shape, wing shape is unfixable from the consumer, so we put high priority in those area. 

Everything from the "back" would classified as "less" critical. In our validation process, we have a named "15-mins" rules. Where after all the shape is validated by us and contributors, we will pass to a newbis who has no idea about it. Give him 15 mins and if he cannot identify any shape error, the 3D CAD can  move on. 

 

To our experience, the experts team who devote into the project usually make the biggest mistake on basic shape or even dimension issue. So, in our workflow, we will ask someone who does not run the project and ask him to have a snap check. 90% of the time, the newbie usually discover some basic flaw and sometimes lead to overall redo the entire CAD we did before. 

 

Kinetic is 10 years old already and we flight for different stage of improvement from shape validation, technical issue such as fitting, parts breakdown..... now we are moving into the stage to try to deliver the details with reduced parts count and also user friendless in assemble and painting. We don't drill into breaking parts to eliminate aftermarket replacement. Instead we try to classify the "need" of the group of customers where we try to serve the widest range of average modellers need and leave the room to aftermarkets+basic kit for advance modeller. 

 

We take building a model like a travel experience, do the same kit with different experience with different options - OOB, superdetails, mass array building. 

 

We define the "Gold Series" label to let customer identify those kits under the new engineering standard. Not only the tooling quality, we actually work back from the injection system to the tooling specification. To make sure the the parts cannot only be "tooled" out, but also consider the long running injection quality stable condition - we move from QC to Process Control. Thus, the tool made now will consider whether the dedicated injection system can be produced in a stable way. We have put excessive investment in the injection system where it is no way to find a subcontractor with such equipment to do subcontracting for us. 

 

Those effect has appear on the F-104G product and now you will see the Harrier GR1/3 and IA-58 and see how far we go since the F-16. 

 

 

Edited by Raymond Chung
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26 minutes ago, Raymond Chung said:

Dear delide,

 

The retooling of the small place is same as new tooled F-104A/C, so unless it has a strong reason, we rather put the investment to other new item than retool it. 

 

Yes, I believe same as every maker, they do have something omitted, for us, nose, canopy, intake shape, wing shape is unfixable from the consumer, so we put high priority in those area. 

Everything from the "back" would classified as "less" critical. In our validation process, we have a named "15-mins" rules. Where after all the shape is validated by us and contributors, we will pass to a newbis who has no idea about it. Give him 15 mins and if he cannot identify any shape error, the 3D CAD can  move on. 

 

To our experience, the experts team who devote into the project usually make the biggest mistake on basic shape or even dimension issue. So, in our workflow, we will ask someone who does not run the project and ask him to have a snap check. 90% of the time, the newbie usually discover some basic flaw and sometimes lead to overall redo the entire CAD we did before. 

 

Kinetic is 10 years old already and we flight for different stage of improvement from shape validation, technical issue such as fitting, parts breakdown..... now we are moving into the stage to try to deliver the details with reduced parts count and also user friendless in assemble and painting. We don't drill into breaking parts to eliminate aftermarket replacement. Instead we try to classify the "need" of the group of customers where we try to serve the widest range of average modellers need and leave the room to aftermarkets+basic kit for advance modeller. 

 

We take building a model like a travel experience, do the same kit with different experience with different options - OOB, superdetails, mass array building. 

 

We define the "Gold Series" label to let customer identify those kits under the new engineering standard. Not only the tooling quality, we actually work back from the injection system to the tooling specification. To make sure the the parts cannot only be "tooled" out, but also consider the long running injection quality stable condition - we move from QC to Process Control. Thus, the tool made now will consider whether the dedicated injection system can be produced in a stable way. We have put excessive investment in the injection system where it is no way to find a subcontractor with such equipment to do subcontracting for us. 

 

Those effect has appear on the F-104G product and now you will see the Harrier GR1/3 and IA-58 and see how far we go since the F-16. 

 

 

Dear Mr. Chung, 

       Would you consider producing a new F-16 series to you gold standard tooling?

 

Brad

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31 minutes ago, Raymond Chung said:

Dear delide,

 

The retooling of the small place is same as new tooled F-104A/C, so unless it has a strong reason, we rather put the investment to other new item than retool it. 

 

Yes, I believe same as every maker, they do have something omitted, for us, nose, canopy, intake shape, wing shape is unfixable from the consumer, so we put high priority in those area. 

Everything from the "back" would classified as "less" critical. In our validation process, we have a named "15-mins" rules. Where after all the shape is validated by us and contributors, we will pass to a newbis who has no idea about it. Give him 15 mins and if he cannot identify any shape error, the 3D CAD can  move on. 

 

To our experience, the experts team who devote into the project usually make the biggest mistake on basic shape or even dimension issue. So, in our workflow, we will ask someone who does not run the project and ask him to have a snap check. 90% of the time, the newbie usually discover some basic flaw and sometimes lead to overall redo the entire CAD we did before. 

 

Kinetic is 10 years old already and we flight for different stage of improvement from shape validation, technical issue such as fitting, parts breakdown..... now we are moving into the stage to try to deliver the details with reduced parts count and also user friendless in assemble and painting. We don't drill into breaking parts to eliminate aftermarket replacement. Instead we try to classify the "need" of the group of customers where we try to serve the widest range of average modellers need and leave the room to aftermarkets+basic kit for advance modeller. 

 

We take building a model like a travel experience, do the same kit with different experience with different options - OOB, superdetails, mass array building. 

 

We define the "Gold Series" label to let customer identify those kits under the new engineering standard. Not only the tooling quality, we actually work back from the injection system to the tooling specification. To make sure the the parts cannot only be "tooled" out, but also consider the long running injection quality stable condition - we move from QC to Process Control. Thus, the tool made now will consider whether the dedicated injection system can be produced in a stable way. We have put excessive investment in the injection system where it is no way to find a subcontractor with such equipment to do subcontracting for us. 

 

Those effect has appear on the F-104G product and now you will see the Harrier GR1/3 and IA-58 and see how far we go since the F-16. 

 

 

 

 

Raymond,

 

I really appreciate that you come here and explain some of the the background of why things are as they are. Maybe you should consider some more publicity with the CAD´s here, before the tool cutting starts. Here are many, many more eyes who might see issues. I will get the TF-104G kit, because I believe that you put great efforts into it to get it right this time. A little bitter sweet taste stays, because the single seater remains with the shape issue. The reason behind you made clear. Maybe there will be a possibility to get F-104A/C fuselage parts for adapting it with the -G tail.

 

Thomas

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35 minutes ago, Raymond Chung said:

Dear delide,

 

1/ The retooling of the small place is same as new tooled F-104A/C, so unless it has a strong reason, we rather put the investment to other new item than retool it. 

 

2/ Yes, I believe same as every maker, they do have something omitted, for us, nose, canopy, intake shape, wing shape is unfixable from the consumer, so we put high priority in those area. 

Everything from the "back" would classified as "less" critical. In our validation process, we have a named "15-mins" rules. Where after all the shape is validated by us and contributors, we will pass to a newbis who has no idea about it. Give him 15 mins and if he cannot identify any shape error, the 3D CAD can  move on. 

 

 

 

3/Kinetic is 10 years old already and we flight for different stage of improvement from shape validation, technical issue such as fitting, parts breakdown..... now we are moving into the stage to try to deliver the details with reduced parts count and also user friendless in assemble and painting. 

 

 

 

 

1/ Can you please clarify 

 

2/ You don't think the largest part of the kit  the fuselage, is equally important if not more so. You'll find that with most kits the areas you have mentioned are more often than not corrected by means of aftermarket items, your own Mirage2K-5 being one with wrong radome and exhaust which has been addressed by KASL.  I cannot think for a minute that any AM producer will market a correct shaped fuselage to rectify the  G's shirt comings and any modification to correct the shape by 99%of modellers(including me) would be a non starter.

 

I don't know if I've read the last part wrong, but why would you pass the CADs to someone "who has no idea about it"?

 

3/ Good to hear, I've found that most of the problems I have building Kinetic kits is that they are over engineered, were a more simplified  approach would be most welcome, the F-5A being one.

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1 hour ago, Raymond Chung said:

Dear delide,

 

The retooling of the small place is same as new tooled F-104A/C, so unless it has a strong reason, we rather put the investment to other new item than retool it. 

 

Yes, I believe same as every maker, they do have something omitted, for us, nose, canopy, intake shape, wing shape is unfixable from the consumer, so we put high priority in those area. 

Everything from the "back" would classified as "less" critical. In our validation process, we have a named "15-mins" rules. Where after all the shape is validated by us and contributors, we will pass to a newbis who has no idea about it. Give him 15 mins and if he cannot identify any shape error, the 3D CAD can  move on. 

 

To our experience, the experts team who devote into the project usually make the biggest mistake on basic shape or even dimension issue. So, in our workflow, we will ask someone who does not run the project and ask him to have a snap check. 90% of the time, the newbie usually discover some basic flaw and sometimes lead to overall redo the entire CAD we did before. 

 

Kinetic is 10 years old already and we flight for different stage of improvement from shape validation, technical issue such as fitting, parts breakdown..... now we are moving into the stage to try to deliver the details with reduced parts count and also user friendless in assemble and painting. We don't drill into breaking parts to eliminate aftermarket replacement. Instead we try to classify the "need" of the group of customers where we try to serve the widest range of average modellers need and leave the room to aftermarkets+basic kit for advance modeller. 

 

We take building a model like a travel experience, do the same kit with different experience with different options - OOB, superdetails, mass array building. 

 

We define the "Gold Series" label to let customer identify those kits under the new engineering standard. Not only the tooling quality, we actually work back from the injection system to the tooling specification. To make sure the the parts cannot only be "tooled" out, but also consider the long running injection quality stable condition - we move from QC to Process Control. Thus, the tool made now will consider whether the dedicated injection system can be produced in a stable way. We have put excessive investment in the injection system where it is no way to find a subcontractor with such equipment to do subcontracting for us. 

 

Those effect has appear on the F-104G product and now you will see the Harrier GR1/3 and IA-58 and see how far we go since the F-16. 

 

 

Wow, thanks for taking the time to share your approaches/insights, to me it all sounds very reasonable. It’s also interesting to hear that the experts make the biggest mistake,  my guess/my excuse :) for them is that they probably got accustomed to what they are working on/what they are seeing all of the time, so it became more difficult for them find the flaws in the designs.

 

Personally I’m not a big fan of F-16 and the Tamiya C is all I need, so I never checked  your F-16, but compared to your earlier kits like the E-2C, yes it’s a very long way, hard to believe it’s only 10 years of difference actually, hope you guys keep improving and release more great kits!  

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1 minute ago, scotthldr said:

1/ Can you please clarify 

 

2/ You don't think the largest part of the kit  the fuselage, is equally important if not more so. You'll find that with most kits the areas you have mentioned are more often than not corrected by means of aftermarket items, your own Mirage2K-5 being one with wrong radome and exhaust which has been addressed by KASL.  I cannot think for a minute that any AM producer will market a correct shaped fuselage to rectify the  G's shirt comings and any modification to correct the shape by 99%of modellers(including me) would be a non starter.

 

I don't know if I've read the last part wrong, but why would you pass the CADs to someone "who has no idea about it"?

 

3/ Good to hear, I've found that most of the problems I have building Kinetic kits is that they are over engineered, were a more simplified  approach would be most welcome, the F-5A being one.

1. A slight change of the "slope" on the parts is simple putting putty for modellers. However in the steel mold, you cannot not just redo the trouble portion. Think about the cavity and core (front/back of the tooling), you have change multiple parts together in a confined area. This is something like doing a heart operation to "fix" something. Thus, the manpower effort and risk to fix the tooling is even more difficult than make a new one. Besides, once the tooling is "injected" few thousands times, the steel has already have some micro blending or some steel get lose. Therefore, retooling would require some "guess" in finding the "exact" position to "modify" the section. Especially with the "Gold series" tooling, the precision tolerance is even require higher precision. Thus, modification a parts means total retool the entire fueslage and it means 90% of the tooling.

 

2. M2K was a product backed in 2010, we were just a baby walking with 2 foot and 2 hands. At that time, I don't even know what they are complaining. As for the G short coming, some italian modeller fix it with some putty and sanding and redo the panel line. But as we see most of the average modellers would even notice until you tell him and they search around for 15 mins to see what you notice. 

 

I do pass the CAD to someone who has no idea of the subject and go for the final snap check. Because of our years of experience in design, all done by human. Each person has blind spot. Especially those experts are well known the subject in details, there focus is on the "details", sometimes, miss the overall shape, dimension. This happens many times not only at Kinetic, it does happen on other brand as well (like Hasegawa F-104 is under scale) and usually calculate from "unclear" dimension basis (e.g. the document state the length - whether include pilot tube or not? ) The F-104G CAD has been submitted to multiple review people in US (with on-site visit),  Italy, France, UK contributors. Now we see that the cross section material on hand does not have the loft line clearly stating shape changes on the intake duct, there is where the mistake come from. Remember, we almost does not use photo to validate shape as photo many times create error from photo angles and no way to proof whether the shape is correct or not. Therefore, we depends on drawings and tasks of validating the drawings is also excessive.

 

We have multiple cases happen where the CAD developed for some months and ready to go for next stage and discover some basic shape or dimension goes wrong. Especially when an experts drill their head too long and too much on the details. And the guy who has no idea on the subject -> similar to general buyer. So, if they don't see this is problem, then the product will fit for majority. Of course, for passion people who loves the subject, they will go for point by point. 

 

Just want to share one of the funny things in development on the upcoming IA-58. We go to UK to on site "measure" the fuselage but failed. Some people say using a LASER to do it. But we try to figure out other way as we think LASER is also not too reliable if we depends on the scanned grid too much. So, we try to get the drawings on the IA-58. But the IA-58 was a captured plane, no material. So, we turn to our contributors bank pool to see who can have it. 

 

and the plane was made in Argentina, so we find some people there and the reported the IA-58A blueprint was burned in a fire. Thus, they just have the IA-58C (a new nose). So, we are very upset with that. But 6 months later, some one knows the mechanics who maintained the plane before. He has a copy in his own library in Brazil. ( I don't know why from Argentina -> Brazil). So, we are happy to the loft line and we can restart the CAD design. But it also takes almost 2 years to rework the parts break down to suitable for tooling. (The bottom of the IA-58 has tons of panel line). 

 

3. The F-5A is not too much parts breakdown, it just the tooling tolerance level is low at the point where the fitting takes a lot of effort to make it join together. Well, that is a journey of a brand development. 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, delide said:

 

Wow, thanks for taking the time to share your approaches/insights, to me it all sounds very reasonable. It’s also interesting to hear that the experts make the biggest mistake,  my guess/my excuse 🙂 for them is that they probably got accustomed to what they are working on/what they are seeing all of the time, so it became more difficult for them find the flaws in the designs.

 

Personally I’m not a big fan of F-16 and the Tamiya C is all I need, so I never checked  your F-16, but compared to your earlier kits like the E-2C, yes it’s a very long way, hard to believe it’s only 10 years of difference actually, hope you guys keep improving and release more great kits!  

Experts are people, people make mistake. But I am sure everyone do their best already. Luckily we just miss one point. 

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Do you think it could be an option to redo the G fuselage on it's own, at the same time as you start to produce the A/C version. Even if it was sold separately from the kit itself and involved extra cost to the buyer, I for one wouldn't mind paying to get the correct shaped parts. I don't know how much it would cost to tool a corrected mould so it might be a non starter.

 

Do you have any plans to redo the F-5A/B in the future?

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9 minutes ago, Raymond Chung said:

Experts are people, people make mistake. But I am sure everyone do their best already. Luckily we just miss one point. 

Yes indeed, I was kidding that they need excuses.

 

12 minutes ago, Raymond Chung said:

I do pass the CAD to someone who has no idea of the subject and go for the final snap check. Because of our years of experience in design, all done by human. Each person has blind spot. Especially those experts are well known the subject in details, there focus is on the "details", sometimes, miss the overall shape, dimension.

Indeed I think one doesn't need an expert to exame the overall shape, a person with good eyes for propotions and curves can probably do even better, like a 2D artist/a person who is very good at drawing, 

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23 minutes ago, scotthldr said:

Do you think it could be an option to redo the G fuselage on it's own, at the same time as you start to produce the A/C version. Even if it was sold separately from the kit itself and involved extra cost to the buyer, I for one wouldn't mind paying to get the correct shaped parts. I don't know how much it would cost to tool a corrected mould so it might be a non starter.

 

Do you have any plans to redo the F-5A/B in the future?

For you my advise to get the F-104A plus the G tail if this is a must for you. The G parts already have recess line at the back so you can cut it and mate with F-104C front. 

the cost for the new tooled one can let you buy a BMW series 3, so you understand what it is. 
 

 

F-5A/B no plan at the moment. 

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99% of us have little if any idea what EDM machine time cost per hour. Let alone the electricity bill. Trust me it's pretty heavy. 410 and 420 stainless steel in the sizes needed ain't cheap as well, and Raymond may have seen the light and gone to an even better steel and multi times the price. Then you get to cut the masters used to cut the molds. Some use graphite while folks with deep pockets use copper inert tungsten ($$$$). Either way the master is in the trash can at the end of the cycle. 

 

Folks have been asking for this airframe and that airframe. I can think of two:

1/48th F100 series

1/32 A37 Dragonfly

gary

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1 hour ago, ChesshireCat said:

99% of us have little if any idea what EDM machine time cost per hour. Let alone the electricity bill. Trust me it's pretty heavy. 410 and 420 stainless steel in the sizes needed ain't cheap as well, and Raymond may have seen the light and gone to an even better steel and multi times the price. Then you get to cut the masters used to cut the molds. Some use graphite while folks with deep pockets use copper inert tungsten ($$$$). Either way the master is in the trash can at the end of the cycle. 

 

Folks have been asking for this airframe and that airframe. I can think of two:

1/48th F100 series

1/32 A37 Dragonfly

gary

 You can't make an omelet, without breaking a few eggs!

LOL 

Edited by B.Sin
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3 hours ago, B.Sin said:

 You can't make an omelet, without breaking a few eggs!

LOL  

very true! I never knew all that much about injection molding till I spent about a month learning from folks who knew the subject. They were making molds to within a half arc second with blended compound curves In 410SS steel. One mold was worth two to three million dollars, and they were mirror imaged to each other.

gary

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8 hours ago, ChesshireCat said:

very true! I never knew all that much about injection molding till I spent about a month learning from folks who knew the subject. They were making molds to within a half arc second with blended compound curves In 410SS steel. One mold was worth two to three million dollars, and they were mirror imaged to each other.

gary

Wow!   So, tell me, with an educated guess, what do you think the cost of tooling was for the F-104?

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