The Moebius Lonestar

[toplessfury]

im confused hobbylink shows it coming out early oct 2010

[highway]

Progress report!

The Lonestar tooling mockups are in Indiana as I write this, and will be going to Navistar's Engineering unit at Ft Wayne IN (where the real truck was designed) for their evaluation and approvals this coming week.

I understand that if all goes well, first test shots should come perhaps in late October/early November, with the kit hitting the shelves in January or February 2011. Stay tuned, this should be one great kit!

Art

This is most welcome news, Art. Thanks for the update!

By the way, what exactly are test shots for? Are they testers to build to discover any assembly problems, and if so, how does one go about building one of the test shots? I would be very interested in doing so.

[RyanSilva]

You cant go by what the retailers say for the expected date.

Same usually goes for video games when they are on preorder.

The retailers need a date, so they use their best judgement to figure one out, usually a projected date from the company, but that might not be up to date

[Art Anderson]

This is most welcome news, Art. Thanks for the update!

By the way, what exactly are test shots for? Are they testers to build to discover any assembly problems, and if so, how does one go about building one of the test shots? I would be very interested in doing so.

Every model kit I know of goes through the test shot phase, when plastic is molded in the new tooling, to check for any errors in cutting the tooling. In the days of so-called analog machining of model kit tooling, when the mockups were used to create 2X sized masters of what the molds should look like, those mockups of the tools themselves were clamped together, and resin poured into them to create oversized resin castings of the sprue, which could then be studied and corrected, before going to steel. Once they had the tool mockups finalized, the tool mockups themselves were copied, on a 3D pantotagraph (just like a draftsman's pantograph, but capable of carrying a milling cutter, and move in all three axes.

After the steel tooling was cut, it would be mounted in a molding machine, and plastic injected into it, the resulting parts being test shots, which were then evaluated for fit, shape and such (remember, those old hand-operated pantographs were subject to error, so there tended to be a few mis-steps that would crop up).

With modern, hi-tech toolmaking, CAM and EDM (Electrostatic Discharge Milling) have taken a lot of the "by Guess and Begosh" out of the equation, new tooling is more nearly correct crack out of the box than ever before (and much more quickly done as well).

Building up test shots can be a ton of work--almost never any instructions beyond perhaps an exploded view drawing of the kit, sometimes no locating pins yet--so it gets rather tedious. The evaluations tend more to checking parts for eqregiously visible mold parting lines (caused by misalignment of mating "slide cores" (a model car body shell can take as many as 6 separate mold cores--all but one of which must slide together and then pull back in order to make those cool one-piece body shells: Upper, right side, left side, front, rear and inner surfaces core), and all must mate up as perfectly as possible to make a high quality body shell. Flashing is also looked for, that happens when the halves of a mold, or multiple slide cores don't mate tightly enough to keep the molten styrene from being forced between the various mold sections (but there does need to be a bit of escape room to get rid of trapped air!), so that becomes where the tool and die makers really earn their pay.

Having reviewed several test shots of new kits, the comments about errors that need fixing can almost be a book sometimes, and the language needed has to be both concise, and in terms that the toolmakers will understand (when dealing with say, a Chinese factory, EVERY comment made in English here will have to be translated into Chinese, so the toolmaker can read and understand what is needed).

Not a task for the faint of heart, it does take a lot of experience, and more than a little bit of judgement as well.

Art

[Art Anderson]

im confused hobbylink shows it coming out early oct 2010

The real projected release dates are what the manufacturer says, not necessarily what some retailer, wholesaler might say on their own.

Art

[jonathono]

Art,

thanks for all the info... if it takes a couple weeks/months longer to get it right the way it should be I hope I speak for everyone when I say it's ok.

just really looking forward to building a couple of lonestar's

Jonathon

[highway]

Thanks for the info on test shots, Art. It sounds very interesting!

[Bryan H]

Art:

Can you comment at all on the profit potential from new tooling? Have modern processes (such as EDM and other CNC methods) made it any easier to make a profit producing plastic model kits? Also, do the efforts to coordinate with workers in foreign countries drive up costs such that production in the US starts to make sense?

Thanks,

Bryan

[Jim B]

It would be nice to see manufacturing of this sort of thing stay in the US instead of going to China. There must be some point where the cheap labor in China is canceled out by shipping costs.

[Zoom Zoom]

It would be nice to see manufacturing of this sort of thing stay in the US instead of going to China. There must be some point where the cheap labor in China is canceled out by shipping costs.

Well, until the day that production/shipping is cheaper here vs. there, it's not going to happen. China will eventually price themselves out of the market, and production will move to the next developing country that pays ultra-low wages. Unfortunately, as time goes by, that could end up being the US...

[Art Anderson]

Art:

Can you comment at all on the profit potential from new tooling? Have modern processes (such as EDM and other CNC methods) made it any easier to make a profit producing plastic model kits? Also, do the efforts to coordinate with workers in foreign countries drive up costs such that production in the US starts to make sense?

Thanks,

Bryan

Bryan,

Sorry, but you are asking questions for which I have no definitive answers; and even if I did, it's just not likely that such would be something I would be prepared to discuss on a public forum such as this.

There are things which are closely held information by manufacturers of all sorts, and even if I knew some of the "juicy bits", it just would not be ethical whatsoever for me to divulge them.

I can say this, however: In the US, for perhaps the last 150 years or so, it's been that low-end consumer products (and it CAN be argued that model kits in general fit the category of low end consumer products) have largely been imported, almost without regard to the subject matter in question.

A century ago, Germany was a principal source of such products, then with the end of WW-I, Japan became the country from where inexpensive products, such as toys and Christmas decorations came. For a while in the 50's and 60's it was Taiwan (remember Cragstan stamped tin toy cars?), then on to Hong Kong, and now China.

Even this country, in its early days, shipped a relative lot of low-cost goods overseas, in addition to commodities such as cotton, tobacco, naval stores (pine tree trunks to England for the masts of ships, pine tar by the barrelful for waterproofing rigging, that sort of thing) and small cheap manufactured goods, although nothing like the volumes of stuff that has come out of the Pacific Rim since the end of WW-II.

My economics education in college taught me (if nothing else!) that no country gets wealthy solely by trading exclusively within its own borders, regardless of the supply of natural resources. I give you as examples a few of the largest exporters of products in the World: Boeing (and before Boeing bought them, Douglas Aircraft) whose airliners are seen in the service of airlines worldwide--their 737 airliner is the most common airliner on the globe. Caterpillar yellow is seen on every continent, even in the face of Kubota and other foreign manufacturers of earthmoving machinery. Regardless of one's misgivings or not, US military aircraft and weapons systems are all over as well. The list goes on and on of course, but mostly US exports tend to be at the high end of the scale. Of course, one ought to keep in mind that this country has been the leading source of agricultural commodities worldwide since before WW-I, and even today, the US steel industry is the largest exporter of steel in the world as well, and aluminum isn't far behind that.

With plastic model kits, while the concept of those can probably be said to have been developed here, the technology has spread all over the place since the 1950's, England, Europe, Latin America, Japan, Korea and now China. One thing that did occur, particularly in the Far East, is the concept of how those kits are tooled. Where AMT, MPC, Revell, Monogram and others relied on HUGE molding machines, and model kit tools that are massive (producing the kit entirely in one large tool base, all parts save for clear, transparent colors, and PVC tires) in one molding cycle on a machine about 30-feet long and perhaps 12' or so high (weighing God only knows how many tons!) for efficiency, Japanese companies began the idea of making model kit tooling in small sprues, such as you see in kits from Tamiya, Hasegawa, Fujimi. Those smaller sprues, self-contained as they are, indicate much smaller molding machines (not nearly as expensive), many of which can be operated automatically, the finished parts literally coming out and dropping on conveyor belts with little, if any, human touch to them.

Now, transfer that sort of technology to a country with a tradition of industrious workers, lots of them, and huge unemployment/underemployment, such as China, a country whose people have a tremendous drive to get ahead, improve their own lives, and an artificially constructed rate of exchange, their currency VS all others, it should be easy to understand why such as model car kits can be made a lot more inexpensively there than just about every place else.

I know, some say "slap some tariffs on", but history shows the very real dangers of that. Eighty years ago, from right now, the US, indeed much of the industrial world was mired in a "Great Recession". Thinking that raising tariffs (import duties) might help break the cycle in this country (strange in a way, seeing as the US wasn't a major importer at the time, but was the largest EXPORTER then!), which the US Congress did (Smoot-Hawley Tariff). With in mere months, the rest of the developed world did the same in retaliation, and harbors all over were filled with idled ships rusting away at anchor, and the Great Recesssion of 1929-30 morphed into the Great Depression of 1931-33, which your grandparents and their generation remembers all too well.

At almost the same time, in almost the same breath as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, came the so-called "Fair Trade" laws, at both the State and Federal levels in this country. Those laws were designed to stem the drop in prices for goods, and were followed quickly by minimum wage laws, figured to stop the decline in wages and salaries (a Depression is characterized as a period of deflation, the drop in wages/prices, rise in the value of money itself). In that environment, there could not be any sort of "discount department stores", which are what the mass-retailer "Big Box" chains are today. Manufacturers in the US had to set the retail price, and that was it, and accordingly, they also set the wholesale price as well, and that was it as well. If one looks at model car kits from their beginnings until the mid-1960's, the stock number on the end of the box nearly always resembled this: "0000-198" the first digits being the stock number (SKU number) and the second set of numbers the retail price of the product. A manufacturer could, if they so desired, under Fair Trade laws, require a merchant to honor that retail price or risk not being supplied with new product, in many US states, and manufacturers did just that in many cases, until the courts ruled otherwise.

Even now, modelers (we still read it on message forums such as this one) that the price of a model kit should be no more than what Walmart charges--or did, when they still carried model kits) Locally owned hobby shops at least perceived that they could not sell model kits at prices needed to support their cost structures (including paying an income to their owners), and we all have heard that lament, which I believe from my personal experience to have been largely unfounded. So, enter the idea of a "price point". Price point simply means a maximum price at which a product can be sold, often arbitrary, generally contrived by the largest retailers. Go over that price point, a manufacturer can easily be frozen out of a marketplace (a particular chain of stores, or an entire class of retailer--same difference, same problem). If that product cannot be profitably produced under existing conditions, then in order for the manufacturer to stay in the game, things simply have to change, no if's, ands or buts. Simplification of the product helped at times, automation on the production line helped for awhile, developing more efficient means of transportation too (ever wonder why semi-trailers grew from say, 30-feet in the late 40's to 53' today?). But eventually, none of those things could be counted on to work anymore. So, enter the world arena, find less expensive (in both real terms and in terms of currency exchange rates) places in which to produce lower end goods. One can only divide up the former $10 price point of a 1/25 scale model car kit so finely (it gets down to as little as a quarter of a penny sometimes with some operations required to produce one!) before any chance of a reasonable rate of return on investment becomes difficult if not impossible to obtain.

Last, consider that model car building isn't the wild fad that it was 50yrs ago. It's not. Time was when a company such as the former AMT Corporation produced literally 10's of millions of car kits yearly, many times more car kits than Detroit build cars when the Big Three plus AMC sold annually roughly 90% of all new cars bought by Americans. Those days for the model kit industry began to decline by the late 1960's, and by the late 1970's, new model car kits announced yearly dropped nearly off the map. Only the return (I maintain) of young and middle aged adults back into this hobby in the 1980's saved this hobby from oblivion, IMO--had that not happened, we'd not have this message board, nor this magazine today.

Will model car kit production ever return to the US? I don't see that happening, not without a sea-shift of major tsunami proportions, and I'm not sure that would be something I'd want to see--the ramifications might well be more undesirable than the result, given the complexities that likely would be involved. So, when it comes to model kits of the American cars we all know and love, I am content these days, to have those developed here, by high wage people knowledgeable, and leave the rest to others, regardless of where they might be, if that is what it takes for me to enjoy my hobby into my senior years. And I say that knowing that if unfettered by Government, other categories of products will come about to employ workers in this country.

Art (Phew, what a long dissertation, but one I have given tons of thought to over a lot of years!)

[Bryan H]

Thanks, Art, for your exhaustive reply. I am 43, so my parents were directly exposed to affects of the Great Depression as you articulated. I am also about to graduate with a Mechanical Engineering degree (mid-life career changer). Your reply helps put some perspective on the manufacturing scene I am about to enter.

Bryan

[Wagoneer81]

Thank you, Art! That has to be the most informative article I've ever read concerning the Modeling Industry and Global Economics and how they relate to one another. I hope I don't sound like a sycophant when I say that this was very enlightening and that Moebius is lucky to have someone of your caliber and experience working with them. I see good things coming from them...More than just a Hudson and a big, wacking International ... I hope you don't mind, I copied your dissertation to a Word Processor Document to save for posterity sake (further study) and to share with others as this topic has come up before and I've been unable to explain it properly. I added a note as to where it was copied from and who the original author was...

[loghauler70]

60 bucks sign me up I can't wait to have a all new kit we haven't had one since the Italeri Volvos and they were ok after you put a engine in them. Face it a Lonestar is COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. I don't build many highway trucks but I will be happy to add one to my fleet.

Mark

[chuckyr]

My economics education in college taught me (if nothing else!) that no country gets wealthy solely by trading exclusively within its own borders, regardless of the supply of natural resources.

Don't get me started on this subject. My college economics education and real world experiences have taught me that the words of Harry Truman were spot on. "What do you get when you get 10 economists in a room. 10 different opinions." However I will suffice it to say that no country has ever been relevant, excluding a dominate military, with out a strong manufacturing sector. Germany being the consummate example.

Why does Germany have the strongest economy in Europe and the 4th largest in the world while other European nations are experiencing problems with their economies? Germany being the 2nd largest exporter in the world, which they recently relinquished the number 1 spot to China. And Germany's exports are renown for their high quality.

The reason why Caterpillar is the world leader in earthmoving equipment is because they have a superior or perceived to have a superior product.

The reason why Boeing has farmed out the development of the 787 is because Airbus has been subsidized by the European Union. Boeing cannot compete with deep pockets of governments. And Airbus does not necessarily make a superior product. Check out the amount of accidents Airbus verse Boeing.

I can say this without being jingoistic. Germany and Japanese companies jump at the chance to purchase American manufacturing companies to gain access to American engineering technology.

Multi National corporations care little about national sovereignty or the labor used to create their products or services. Multi National corporations care about profits. Which is, after all the only reason why a business exists!

I can go on and on, but I have taken too much space being totally off topic of scale models.

I just felt I had to interject another point of view.

[Art Anderson]

Don't get me started on this subject. My college economics education and real world experiences have taught me that the words of Harry Truman were spot on. "What do you get when you get 10 economists in a room. 10 different opinions." However I will suffice it to say that no country has ever been relevant, excluding a dominate military, with out a strong manufacturing sector. Germany being the consummate example.

Why does Germany have the strongest economy in Europe and the 4th largest in the world while other European nations are experiencing problems with their economies? Germany being the 2nd largest exporter in the world, which they recently relinquished the number 1 spot to China. And Germany's exports are renown for their high quality.

The reason why Caterpillar is the world leader in earthmoving equipment is because they have a superior or perceived to have a superior product.

The reason why Boeing has farmed out the development of the 787 is because Airbus has been subsidized by the European Union. Boeing cannot compete with deep pockets of governments. And Airbus does not necessarily make a superior product. Check out the amount of accidents Airbus verse Boeing.

I can say this without being jingoistic. Germany and Japanese companies jump at the chance to purchase American manufacturing companies to gain access to American engineering technology.

Multi National corporations care little about national sovereignty or the labor used to create their products or services. Multi National corporations care about profits. Which is, after all the only reason why a business exists!

I can go on and on, but I have taken too much space being totally off topic of scale models.

I just felt I had to interject another point of view.

Chuckyr,

Points well taken (although you did omit that Germany, of all the major economic powers on the planet, also maintains a relatively high unemployment rate even in the best of times).

It's also most interesting that Germany's model kit company--Revell of Germany, produces the bulk (if not all) of their product in other countries, mostly in Eastern Europe (Poland, etc.) which helps to illustrate what I wrote in my all-to-long post. In addition, the lofty Japanese plastic kit maker, Tamiya has also outsourced much of their model kit production, to places like the Phillipines.

Something which I failed to address is, the USA is one of the most expensive countries in which to manufacture goods, make things. Others in that club include also Germany and Japan. It's not only wage rates vis-a-vis those in other lands, but also non-wage related benefits, and of course, taxation. Most countries in the EU, as I understand it, also have a multilevel national sales tax, the so-called VAT or Value Added Tax (where the increase in value of any commodity and/or the final product, is taxed at every stage of the production and marketing process--but not if that product is sold as export--at least some of the VAT gets waived in that regard, much like in this country, when we buy stuff across state lines without actually traveling to that particular state (such as eBay, mail/phone/internet ordering of model car kits from say, Illinois when we live in another state), we don't pay the sales tax in that state unless we actually put our feet on the ground there when making such purchases.

And of course, while I made mention of China as being populated by people with a long tradition of a work ethic AND a huge rate of unemployment/underemployment, I failed to address that China, for all its geographical size, lacks the huge natural resources that we in this country were, and still are, blessed with. Germany and Japan as well fit into that same category. Germany and Japan rely on other countries for oil, iron and other metal ores, and with Japan, a ton of food imports from overseas to support their industry and population. Germany is in that category as well, although not to such a great extent except for petroleum. (The Second World War was, for both those countries, as much for grabbing real estate with resources as it was for anything else!)

I've gotten a ton of economic theory force-fed into my head over my lifetime: In my Sr year in HS, our economics class used the textbook "Principles of Economics", and a year later, as a college freshmen, that same text again, in an economics course taught by its author, who was on Sabatical from the University of Chicago--perhaps you've heard of Dr Paul Samuelson (wish I had been more attentive in his class!) In addition, I grew up knowing, and listening to, a pair of outstanding agricultural economists from the University here, one of whom drafted "Food for Peace" and the economic model for the Green Revolution, which helped to make India self-sufficient in that area. But it was my Micro-Economics professor, who had been GE's Chief Economist, before he went to India, and worked tirelessly to persuade that government to abandon some of its practices (which they pretty much have, BTW) that kept India as a huge, but poverty stricken nation, with a very small wealthy ruling class). So, I think I did learn a lot over the years from all these sources.

As a boy, I knew about such brands as Leica, Wollensak, Blaupunkt, Marklin, Lehmann Model Bahn (LMB), Schuco, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche and VW, all were iconic brands and products from Germany in the 1950's (model kits weren't yet on my radar screen from them). Of those, I believe only the automobile marques are still made in Germany, and even Mercedes and BMW stumbled embarrassingly in the last several years over quality issues.

As for multinationals not really caring much about the places in which they operate, I would give you British Petroleum, which has faced severe and deserved scrutiny over the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this spring and summer. What about Union Carbide, and the tragedy of Bhopal India about 25yrs ago or so? If a Boeing airliner goes down anyplace in the world, does not Boeing dispatch a team of investigators to aid in determining the cause? Even foreign automakers producing cars here in the US toe the line to our regulations and concerns.

But I digress. It may well happen sometime in the future, that many of the low-end consumer products that used to be made in this country may once again be produced here--and hopefully that will happen due to the growth and development in other countries, to the point that it becomes economically not feasible for them to do that for us. Time will tell, of course. Barely 20 years ago, it was a tremendous concern, for example, that foreign steelmakers were eating the lunch of their US counterparts, but that concern is, I think, a thing of the past at least for now. Airbus got dealt a huge blow by the WTO, when Boeing won an almost landmark (and RARE for a US mfr) ruling from that outfit that Airbus was improperly subsidized by the countries where they operate (the UK, France, Germany), and as such Airbus isn't likely to get a look at the USAF aerial tanker project after all. And at some point, WTO or someone else, will rule against The Peoples Republic of China over their artificial manipulation of currency exchange rates, and the playing field will likely level out a bit.

Art

[Bryan H]

Thanks again Art, especially for tailoring your response to matters that relate to plastic model kit production.

Bryan

[loghauler70]

I forgot to ask Is this model going to be a curb side or is it going to have a motor in it not that it matters I already have mine preordered just wondering I haven't been able to find much on it.

Mark

[highway]

I forgot to ask Is this model going to be a curb side or is it going to have a motor in it not that it matters I already have mine preordered just wondering I haven't been able to find much on it.

Mark

The info is that it will have an engine, I forget what type, but I think it is supposed to be a Navistar.

[Art Anderson]

I forgot to ask Is this model going to be a curb side or is it going to have a motor in it not that it matters I already have mine preordered just wondering I haven't been able to find much on it.

Mark

15-liter Cummins-Navistar engine.

Art

[Jim B]

Is that the MaxxForce15? I thought that was a Caterpiller-Navistar engine.

[chuckyr]

Chuckyr,

Rather than engage in the merits and demerits of Neoclassic verse Keynesian economic theories, I will say this. No nation can maintain any kind of viable middle class with out a manufacturing sector that turns out items that offer good living wages. We have experienced and are continuing the effects of the Chicago School, Milton Friedman, supply side economics and for sure the over all standard of living in the US is decreasing.

True, we are living in a different world than we were 30 years ago and many so called developed nations are becoming the equal economically as the so called western nations. However if we (US) want to be like Mexico, where the middle class is small and concentrated and economic mobility is difficult at best, then should we be continuing the low prices at the cost of well paying jobs, the so called WalMart-ization of our economy?

BTW, the biggest promoter of the Chicago School of supply side economics, Alan Greenspan finally had to renounce many of his long held tenets.

Now back to modeling.

[Dave Metzner]

Here's a link to a gallery of Lonestar mock-up pics. These show more details of the mock-up including the MaxxForce 15 engine.

There are still some minor detail revisions and additions. The mock-up is back at the factory, I hope that the revisions can be completed in the next 10 days - 2 weeks - then off to tooling!

Dave

My link

Edited July 28, 2010 by Dave Metzner

[Bernard Kron]

I don't build big trucks but models of this quality make me want to consider it very seriously. Absolutely stunning (at least to my untrained eye)!

Edited July 28, 2010 by gbk1

[chuckyr]

Wow! Personally, I can't complain about that, although I'm sure somebody will. Looks like we will indeed have a lot to look forward to. Thanks for the updates Dave.