JoHan, Revell, Monogram etc Old Tooling query

[HotRodaSaurus]

With all the talk of lost and altered manufacturing tooling, I was wondering how many moulding tool sets would be made for each kit run?

A run of 20 000 kits is surley not made on one set of tooling, also Revell made kits here in the UK,also Argentina, 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham for example and as this item had a quite long shelf run in the stores what would happen when the tooling wore out?. Is there not a production line, (say, 6 machines) all set up the same popping out kit after kit?

Were all the tools stored together and when altered the whole lot done at the same time?

What prompted this thought was I emailed JoHan some years back when the wanted some input into what builders wanted, I replied 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood, they replied the tooling was beyond further use.

TIA, John

[Aaronw]

I'm sure Art will be along with a definitive answer but until then from what I've read on similar discussions the tooling would be capable of far more than 20,000 kits. I think 20,000 would be a small average kit run, because runs of 5000-10,000 kits are generally listed as limited issues.

As I understand it, each sprue is a set of tooling, so they might have 5 or 6 machines running but each would be cranking out a sprue, not a whole kit. It sounds as though, yes one kit one set of tools. If they were making kits in the UK and then wanted to change production of that kit to Mexico they would have to ship that tool to Mexico.

One of the issues Art and others have described is that the individual tooling sets were often misplaced over time, so they might have 3/4 of the kit tools, but without that last 1/4 it isn't really worth anything unless they are willing to retool that sprue. If not well marked it is just a ??? tool, could be part of a 1965 Mustang or a P51 Mustang. Similarly many were damaged over time sitting in storage, rust, or physical damage (dropped, run into with a forklift, stolen and scrapped etc).

Johan in particular used an older style of machine, which may or may not have been capable of the size runs Revell, Monogram and AMT were capable of.

[CAL]

I'm sure Art will be along with a definitive answer but until then from what I've read on similar discussions the tooling would be capable of far more than 20,000 kits. I think 20,000 would be a small average kit run, because runs of 5000-10,000 kits are generally listed as limited issues.

As I understand it, each sprue is a set of tooling, so they might have 5 or 6 machines running but each would be cranking out a sprue, not a whole kit. It sounds as though, yes one kit one set of tools. If they were making kits in the UK and then wanted to change production of that kit to Mexico they would have to ship that tool to Mexico.

One of the issues Art and others have described is that the individual tooling sets were often misplaced over time, so they might have 3/4 of the kit tools, but without that last 1/4 it isn't really worth anything unless they are willing to retool that sprue. If not well marked it is just a ??? tool, could be part of a 1965 Mustang or a P51 Mustang. Similarly many were damaged over time sitting in storage, rust, or physical damage (dropped, run into with a forklift, stolen and scrapped etc).

Johan in particular used an older style of machine, which may or may not have been capable of the size runs Revell, Monogram and AMT were capable of.

According to a form AMT employee it was 75000 units to break even on a tool.

AFAIK there was only one tool for a kit. I never heard of mulitiple tools for the same kit.

A tool when worn was either retired, or repaired, and then brought out for limited run specials.

No assmebly line production.

[Art Anderson]

According to a form AMT employee it was 75000 units to break even on a tool.

AFAIK there was only one tool for a kit. I never heard of mulitiple tools for the same kit.

A tool when worn was either retired, or repaired, and then brought out for limited run specials.

No assmebly line production.

For starters here, there is really no such thing as "no assembly line production" in model kit production--in other words, no run of say, 10 kits, then put the tooling away. The sheer effort to pull a tool base out of storage, purge all the preservatives out of it, check it out, then mill-wright it into a mold press precludes that sort of thing, except as part of a checkout process to put it into production.

The time-honored break-even point on a new tool was 60,000 to 75,000 units sold in the first year of sales, just to recoup the development costs. With a reissue, where no new tooling is cut, only maintenance and tool restoration an issue, the breakeven point for such a model kit if sold at normal retail prices as a regular item has always been far lower than for a new tool. But then, the expected sales of a reissue almost always can be predicted to be far less than for a new, never-before-produced subject.

Now, as for things such as tool wear: While styrene (and PVC as used for tires) is pretty abrasive (all you need do is remember how dull your razor saws and needle files get working on model car parts), it really doesn't wear the tooling if that tooling is made from hardened steel (which almost all regular production model car dies are made from), but other parts of the tooling equation do wear--principally those areas were there is metal-to-metal sliding contact, or significant impact of one die against another. Such is the case with ejector/alignment pins in the dies, the slides for sliding core molds (these are used for body shells, where almost always, a 6-core mold is used--inner core, upper surface core, left side core, right side core, front core, rear core), obliquely angled mating surfaces of those slide cores (this is where mold parting lines on body shells come from, and where body misalignments happen over time).

As for multiple duplicate tools. VERY uncommon indeed, as it is quite possible for a mold press to squeeze out a year's worth of sales of almost all model kits in a manner of days, perhaps a couple of weeks of continuous production. AMT did do multiple tools of a couple of kits, one of those being their Original Series Star Trek USS Enterprise NCC-1701, simply due to the insatiable demand for this model for a long time. I was told, back in the late 1970's, that AMT actually had cut 5 different sets of tooling for this one, the first few having been done in hard aluminum alloy simply because the figured the kit to be a short-lived TV model (almost all TV or Movie model kits traditionally have very short legs), that only when they came to realize that USS Enterprise had become a staple item in their product line did they spring for the added cost of hardened steel.

The biggest issue facing any steel model kit tool isn't wear, but deterioration over time. Unless that tool is well coated in a preservative, such as cosmoline, upon being retired to the Tool Bank warehouse, it will rust, and rust is the enemy of the surface of any finely done mold. Significantly visible rusting generally renders at least the body tooling part of any mold unusable, due to unrepairability. The other issue would be missing tooling sections. While a lot of an older AMT, MPC, Revell or Monogram tool got cut into the tool base itself, a lot of the parts were tooled in smaller, separate blocks of steel, and those blocks fitted into the much larger tool base. This was done in order to be able to make smaller parts detailed more crisply, or as in the case of wheels and hubcaps, so that the "hobs" to make these could be done on milling machines where the work could be rotated. If significant tool blocks are missing, and cannot be located--it's either fuggedaboudit or pop for the $$ to retool the missing sections--and often the costs associated with that nix the project.

Art

[HotRodaSaurus]

Thanks guys, having worked as a maintenance engineer in an injection moulding shop I did think that that there would be more than one set of tools as we made car componants and at least 3 operatives would be cranking out the componants to supply the motor industry as quickly as possible.

Thinking on, a model kit of any kind must be the most complex mould tooling made. I knew that the tools went together in block form as some issues of our kits have componants missing from issue to issue such as custom parts etc and also the transition from multi piece bodies to one piece must be a major factor in cost.

It is interesting that most other models such as aircraft, military and ship models still retain the multi piece format for the fuselages,hulls etc.

75000 kits just to break even eh! no wonder there are a lot of unbuilt vintage kits out there, I imagine then that a lot of the 'RARE' kits were not that popular at the time rather than the supply and demand option.

Oh, and I thought 20 000 for a limited run was a bit on the high side

Thanks again, real interesting stuff, John

Edited February 25, 2009 by HotRodaSaurus

[Casey]

I've always found the whole topic of model kit tooling to be fascinating, so thanks for the great info, Art.

I recall reading a few years ago (at least ten) some JoHan employees were not paid for their work, so some took pieces of the tooling to sell for scrap (molybdenum content?), thus making future production of some kits darn near impossible. This was also the reason we've only seen the same few "new" kits ('71 Cuda and AMX Pro Street Hobby Shop Only) from JoHan/Testors, again from what I recall reading.

I had also read what Art mentioned regarding the tooling's condition when removed from storage, particularly that some tools were too pitted from rust and corrosion when they were pulled out of storage to be useable. I'm sure there are plenty of kits that will never be re-popped because of this issue alone.

And then there are the Aurora tools at the bottom of Lake Erie... I would love for Round 2 to reverse engineer the 1/16th Funny Car kits the way Polar Lights did with some Aurora kits in the '90s.

[Art Anderson]

I've always found the whole topic of model kit tooling to be fascinating, so thanks for the great info, Art.

I recall reading a few years ago (at least ten) some JoHan employees were not paid for their work, so some took pieces of the tooling to sell for scrap (molybdenum content?), thus making future production of some kits darn near impossible. This was also the reason we've only seen the same few "new" kits ('71 Cuda and AMX Pro Street Hobby Shop Only) from JoHan/Testors, again from what I recall reading.

I had also read what Art mentioned regarding the tooling's condition when removed from storage, particularly that some tools were too pitted from rust and corrosion when they were pulled out of storage to be useable. I'm sure there are plenty of kits that will never be re-popped because of this issue alone.

And then there are the Aurora tools at the bottom of Lake Erie... I would love for Round 2 to reverse engineer the 1/16th Funny Car kits the way Polar Lights did with some Aurora kits in the '90s.

The story of JoHan's beryllium copper tooling inserts is apparently quite correct, according to my sources, but rather than not being paid at all, they were not being paid well at all, and many of them apparently had problems with chemical dependency, both solid and liquid--and it was said that there were a couple of unscrupulous scrap dealers in the area of the JoHan plant who were more than willing to "cooperate".

Yes, some of the old tooling still around has suffered rust damage. Light surface rust is one thing, that can be polished away with little effect on the mold surfaces, but deep pitting is quite another matter. Circa 1990, Minicraft managed to find, in an old warehouse in Venice CA, several of the old Gowland & Gowland Highway Pioneers tools, which they arranged to acquire the use of. Minicraft put, on their instruction sheets for these sets of cars (4 per set, with the Cord 812 and Duesenberg Model J Phaeton being paired together), a disclaimer stating that the tooling was run as found, and that where there might be a stray chunk of plastic on the surface of a part, as in a body panel, it was from rust pitting, due to the humid conditions in Venice CA, which is down right on the harbor's edge.

As for the old Aurora tooling--most of that, once Monogram got the tools to Morton Grove (yes, there was a train derailment, which did dump some of the tools on the right of way--again, according to folks I've talked with, who were there at Monogram at the time), upon surveying them, they determined that there were a lot of tools that simply didn't fit the standards Monogram held for themselves (Monogram by then being the premiere model kit company in the US), and when the recession of 1981-82 hit full blast, those "substandard" beryllium copper tools were sold for scrap, to raise capital to keep Monogram afloat.

Art

[Casey]

Great info, Art.

One more question- are some tools still stored in warehouses in the U.S. or are/were they all shipped to wherever the particular comnany's kits are actually produced, be it China, Mexico, etc.? I would assume some are still stateside.

[Art Anderson]

Thanks guys, having worked as a maintenance engineer in an injection moulding shop I did think that that there would be more than one set of tools as we made car componants and at least 3 operatives would be cranking out the componants to supply the motor industry as quickly as possible.

Thinking on, a model kit of any kind must be the most complex mould tooling made. I knew that the tools went together in block form as some issues of our kits have componants missing from issue to issue such as custom parts etc and also the transition from multi piece bodies to one piece must be a major factor in cost.

It is interesting that most other models such as aircraft, military and ship models still retain the multi piece format for the fuselages,hulls etc.

75000 kits just to break even eh! no wonder there are a lot of unbuilt vintage kits out there, I imagine then that a lot of the 'RARE' kits were not that popular at the time rather than the supply and demand option.

Oh, and I thought 20 000 for a limited run was a bit on the high side

Thanks again, real interesting stuff, John

John,

Comparing say, a model car body shell with an airplane kit is like comparing apples to oranges--both "taste good", but the interpretations are different. It's pretty hard to put stuff inside an airplane fuselage in a model, when that fuselage is all one piece--in fact, pretty near impossible to even mold one that way to begin with. If you look at say, a model ship hull, most kits of ships WW-II and later, the kits have one piece hulls, molded in either 2 or up to 4 section slide core molds. Once you get beyond our passion for one-piece body shells (OK, with front and rear fascia as separate parts sometimes!), the rest of the model car kits we like are of the same concept as nearly every other model kit subject on the planet.

On the economic side, there is a vast difference between a plastic model kit company (today, anyway) and a producer of injection molded plastic parts for a production 1:1 automobile--that gulf being in the sheer number of the same part produced. In addition, I would submit that while the tooling for the most complex automotive plastic molded part may be in itself extremely complex, it can be replicated very quickly, as this is the perfect area for CNC (which isn't used all that much in model kit tooling construction, for reasons too numerous to go into for the purposes of this discussion). But, the economics of plastic model kit tooling today, with the current sales levels, just don't justify a relatively small company such as Revell or Auto World spending the 10's of thousands of dollars to create a second set of molds, when a whole year's expected sales of most any model kit can be run in a matter of days, perhaps 2-3 weeks at most. Another factor to consider is that model kit producers have many more tools to run than they have machines, at their peak, AMT Corporatin had perhaps 15 full-sized injection molders, to cover upwards of 100 kit subjects of all kinds in any one year's catalog. So, any run made has to cover many months of projected sales demand.

In addition, unlike most industrial parts molding operations, model kit companies have, after the molding stage, an assembly line to operate--it's how they make sure that all the sprues get into the kit boxes, in a particular order for proper packaging, and safe shipping, along with instruction sheets and decals. This makes it possible, of course, to hold bagged shots of kits or kit parts until more kits are needed in the pipeline. At best, in their peak years, AMT Corporation had perhaps 3 kit assembly lines (by the mid-1970's, when I was going into the Maple Avenue plant in Troy MI every 4-6 weeks with builtups to deliver, they had but two assembly lines for packaging kits. So, all those baggies get stored in huge corrugated cartons in a warehouse area, until they are needed.

More of my observations.

Art

[Art Anderson]

Great info, Art.

One more question- are some tools still stored in warehouses in the U.S. or are/were they all shipped to wherever the particular comnany's kits are actually produced, be it China, Mexico, etc.? I would assume some are still stateside.

As of 2004, when for 6 months I was employed by the then Playing Mantis Division of RC2, AMT and MPC tooling was still stored in Dyersville IA, most in the former Ertl diecasting plant building in the town of Dyersville, the remainder in a warehouse just outside the city limits. Only those kits being run, or that had been run, in China, were overseas. I believe the same was true for the rather brief period of time that AMT/Ertl tried molding kits in Mexico.

Art

[Tim J. Wolfe]

There's a rumor going around that Johan sold the tooling to a specific individual, (I don't have a name) and he refuses to make any more kits,nor will he allow anyone else to produce them either. Anyone know of this ?