“Styrene” Not what it used to be.

[Brutalform]

This is a bit of a rant, and in no way am I bashing any individual company,  but these kits today, and the styrene being used in them, is pretty terrible in my opinion. I know a lot of people on this forum know what I am talking about, because many of you have experienced the lesser quality in the plastic, over the last several years. I don’t know what gives, but if anyone knows what they (industry) are doing to cast the kits today, please chime in. 

I decided to open one of my Revell 68 Hemi Dart kits, as I recently acquired a pro street chassis for it. The kit has beautiful details, and required very minimal cleanup, but this plastic is so soft, and flimsy, I snapped two parts, while being delicate with them. 

Is it really necessary to skimp on the quality of the plastic, while demanding top dollar for the kits? I now understand, when another member in these boards, stated that he “refuses to build any new kits” because of the plastic used today.

I was watching Donn Yosts YouTube channel,  and he had some bodies disintegrate while soaking them in Purple Power. And I’m thinking to myself, I hope I never mess up another paint job, and  have to strip a car again. 

Rant over. 

[Deuces]

I remember when the Revell 2006 Mustang kit came out.... Not enough pigment in the body shell... I was kinda worried about painting it... It still sitting on a shelf....

[Ace-Garageguy]

Yup. Across the board, much of business "management" today seems to be primarily concerned with engineering out every last penny of "unnecessary" cost, and if quality suffers, who cares?

It's easy to blame the "offshore" suppliers of the krapp that's marketed here today, but a fair share of the blame HAS to go towards the quality-control folks on THIS side of the pond. If you accept second-rate garbage, you'll get nothing but second-rate garbage.

I've been seeing this trend towards sub-standard materials and specs that aren't adhered to in offshore-made tools and real-car parts for decades.

SOME US companies are beginning to realize that if they sell the cheapest trash they can get the highest profits on, they'll eventually lose customers...and these smart ones are doing something about it.

But if the market doesn't make any noise about poor quality materials, they'll just keep getting worse.

[bobthehobbyguy]

Can't speak on the new kits because in the last 10 years I've bought very few kits. However changing plastic composition is nothing new. I remember that amt went  through a phase where the plastic was rubbery.  I remember times where Revell had plastics that were brittle becuase of the dyes. As said we need to vote with our wallet when we find something unacceptable.

[Bucky]

I have an original AMT '67 Cougar kit on the bench. I have robbed some parts from an AMT '69 Cougar XR-7 kit issued in 1977.  The '67 body is solid as a rock. Very sturdy. Easy to work with, as I hacked off the top with a razor saw, having no problems. The body in the '69 kit is so badly warped, I won't be able to use it. When I pick it up from the box, it wants to try to just fold up on me. 

So, that is a difference in styrene from '67 to '77. I, too, have noticed a difference in the styrene through the years, as well as a difference in styrene from one manufacturer to the other. They don't all seem to use the same formula.

[Plowboy]

The only terrible styrene I've experienced is the old JoHan kits. Especially if they are molded in any color. Their styrene is like working with kit glass. Brittle as all get out and almost impossible to glue with regular glues. Crazy glue is about the only glue that will hold it together. I have a few in the stash. But, I won't be building any of them. I'd rather get a colonoscopy with a strand of barbed wire than work with their styrene! 

[High octane]

41 minutes ago, Plowboy said:

The only terrible styrene I've experienced is the old JoHan kits. Especially if they are molded in any color. Their styrene is like working with kit glass. Brittle as all get out and almost impossible to glue with regular glues. Crazy glue is about the only glue that will hold it together. I have a few in the stash. But, I won't be building any of them. I'd rather get a colonoscopy with a strand of barbed wire than work with their styrene! 

Are you sure you would rather do that???

[peteski]

1 hour ago, Plowboy said:

The only terrible styrene I've experienced is the old JoHan kits. Especially if they are molded in any color. Their styrene is like working with kit glass. Brittle as all get out and almost impossible to glue with regular glues. Crazy glue is about the only glue that will hold it together. I have a few in the stash. But, I won't be building any of them. I'd rather get a colonoscopy with a strand of barbed wire than work with their styrene! 

That is odd.  Polystyrene is a type of a resin, and even with additives (like pigments or plasticizers), its basic chemical properties are still the same.  So, strong solvents like acetone, MEK or methylene chloride (either of which is  used in liquid cements for styrene) should soften or melt it (which is how those glues weld parts together).  If those types of cements are not working properly, I wonder if JoHan used some sort of different type of plastic?

[Mr. Muppet]

7 minutes ago, peteski said:

That is odd.  Polystyrene is a type of a resin, and even with additives (like pigments or plasticizers), its basic chemical properties are still the same.  So, strong solvents like acetone, MEK or methylene chloride (either of which is  used in liquid cements for styrene) should soften or melt it (which is how those glues weld parts together).  If those types of cements are not working properly, I wonder if JoHan used some sort of different type of plastic?

I believe the old Johan kits were molded from acetate plastic.

[Bucky]

2 hours ago, Plowboy said:

The only terrible styrene I've experienced is the old JoHan kits. Especially if they are molded in any color. Their styrene is like working with kit glass. Brittle as all get out and almost impossible to glue with regular glues. Crazy glue is about the only glue that will hold it together. I have a few in the stash. But, I won't be building any of them. I'd rather get a colonoscopy with a strand of barbed wire than work with their styrene! 

I'll trade ya a roll of rusty barbed wire for all those Jo-Han kits!! LoL

[Ace-Garageguy]

"Styrene" is a blanket term for a material with an almost endless range of possible characteristics. It's a complex subject, considering it's such a ubiquitous material, and somebody could have a PhD in "plastics engineering" and still not know everything there is to know about "styrene".

Toughness, hardness, impact resistance, solvent resistance, Tg (glass transition temperature, or the temperature at which the material becomes permanently deformed), and a variety of other factors can be influenced by exact composition of the base "resin", as well as a fair number of additives that can tailor it for specific applications. Earlier Johan kits, circa '61 ( I have several, and have tested various solvent-type and other adhesives on them) used a particularly solvent-resistant grade of "high impact styrene", a material that was developed to counter "pure" polystyrene's tendency to shatter, leaving very sharp edges (NOT what you want on a kid's toys). It behaves rather like ABS (a modified "styrene), being harder to work, tougher, and harder to "glue" than other styrene grades. And as Plowboy mentions, it can be brittle.

On the flip side, we have the very soft, poorly-solvent resistant gray goo many AMT reissue kits were being pumped out with a while ago, and a somewhat more solvent-resistant and harder grade recently...though generally still nowhere near as solvent-resistant as Johan's older stuff...and an endless array of in-betweens (which is why I always recommend people TEST THE PAINT MATERIALS YOU WANT TO USE ON HIDDEN AREAS OF THE MODEL YOU WANT TO USE IT ON FIRST).

While the Johan version is a little more challenging to work with, the upside is that its high solvent-resistance makes it almost impervious to the hottest automotive-grade rattlecan primers...with no surface crazing whatsoever when shot wet to flow it out.

Again, on the flip side, I have recent Revell kits (the '30 Ford coupe was the worst offender) that practically shriveled up when shot wet with Duplicolor "sanding" primer. Surface crazing was so bad, the models were only suitable for heavily rusted, weathered builds...not what I was going for.

Revell's old 1/8 scale '32 Fords, molded in black, are somewhere in between. Revell's last-reissue chrome engine parts-packs, after being stripped to reveal the whitish translucent base plastic, are very resistant to hot primers, yet still glue easily with solvent glues. Get the picture? The stuff is all over the board.

There's been endless argument about whether this is a real phenomenon or not, but anyone who works with a wide variety of kits, and who's really paying attention (and demanding high-quality results from their work) will be fully aware of it.

 

Edited August 28, 2019 by Ace-Garageguy

[Bucky]

Very good info, Bill. I, for one, appreciate this post. I'll certainly look at my different kits with this in mind from this point forward. I always thought the Monogram and REVELL plastics were different from the AMT and MPC stuff, even in the early days.

[Brian Austin]

16 hours ago, Plowboy said:

The only terrible styrene I've experienced is the old JoHan kits. Especially if they are molded in any color. Their styrene is like working with kit glass. Brittle as all get out and almost impossible to glue with regular glues. Crazy glue is about the only glue that will hold it together. I have a few in the stash. But, I won't be building any of them. I'd rather get a colonoscopy with a strand of barbed wire than work with their styrene! 

This kind of reminds me of the trouble I had cutting and stretching an early issue of Revell's PT Cruiser to make a hearse.  I think those bodies of that era were actually ABS, and didn't seem to want to stay glued to regular old polystyene among other issues.   That project was a particularly hard-fought battle.  The plastic wasn't glass-brittle, but it broke in unexpected ways.

IIRC the Revell '56 Chevy 210 bodies were also ABS.

[GaryR]

A far cry from the 60's!
AND model glue SUCKS since they did whatever it was they did to take out what morons sniffed to get high.

My Testors and Testors liquid and Revell Type S was great stuff.

 

[Fat Brian]

As a relative youngster around here I had never worked on a truly old original issue kit until fairly recently so I had no idea how bad modern plastic is but man, the difference is incredible. 

[gotnitro?]

This topic reminds me of one circulated on the armor forums awhile back about builders experiencing issues w certain manufacturers plastic. One that jumps out was the green molded Trumpeter kits, very hard and difficult to get glue to adhere. Soon after Panda plastic was very rubbery, almost flexible to a degree. 

I havent built many older kits, but the few havent really melted using Testors thin or Tamiya extra thin the way gel glue used too..

 

[Bucky]

That must be why some old rebuilder-type models are easier to take apart than others. Some of them literally just snap apart, like taking down a Snap-tite build.

[Ace-Garageguy]

5 minutes ago, Bucky said:

That must be why some old rebuilder-type models are easier to take apart than others. Some of them literally just snap apart, like taking down a Snap-tite build.

That, and some folks just used useless glue. I've seen "rebuilders" that were originally assembled with Elmer's, contact cement, and the notorious "non toxic" garbage.

 

[ChrisBcritter]

Some of my old rebuilders were put together with Ambroid cement - that stuff seems to come off pretty easily, thank goodness.

[Spex84]

I've never experienced Johan plastic, but I've seen original AMT, brittle old Monogram tinted styrene, soft grey 90s Ertl plastic, and of course the soft, almost translucent white plastic some of the newer Revell kits seem to be molded in.

I like carving up that Ertl plastic, but yeah, hot paints really mess with it.

Looking forward to building some of the vintage AMT stuff though!

[dmthamade]

Great topic!! Years ago I was building a 1/32 A-7E CorsairII  by Trumpeter. All going great, glued wings, etc together, dried and sanded seams. Parts fell apart. Huh. Reglued, resanded, fell apart... glue had zero effect on the "plastic". I was using a hot solvent cement, tried spilling some on a wing part and pressing with finger...nothing. Don't know what material it was, but it got binned. Just bad juju when a kit can't be glued together. I've got a few recent car kits in the stash now, I can see the plastic looks "different" from the aircraft kits i'm used to. The only thing that will matter will be the end results, though.

 

Don