what are resin kits?

[rewooh]

I've always wanted to know..

<~~~ newbie

[Phyrox]

I kit made of resin. Imagine chunks of solid, rather brittle plastic.

A very different animal than your injection or (god forbid) vacuform) kits.

The advantages of resin are that it is easy and scheap to make/mold, so small "garage companies" use it normally. Which means some rare things can only be found in resin.

For the same reasons, resin kits are often quite expensive for the buyer, and quality is not always great.

[Skull Leader]

Most Resin kits are considerably more limited runs. Where injection-mold kits are typically mass-produced, the best resin kits can see a release of 1,000 or less oftentimes.

Overall level of detail tends to be higher

Pieces are solid plastic(resin), must sturdier and heavier

Typically more challanging to build.

[David Hingtgen]

Ehh, for small/thin pieces, resin is just plain brittle/fragile. Plastic, while weak, will bend.

For big pieces, resin's like a rock.

[VF19]

Think of it like porcelain. more like china, actually. if it was a thick hunk, it would be like its was bullets proof, but in a thin sheet, crack. That simple.

[Myersjessee]

pieces are often solid also...unlike injection models....but there are interesting models out there down by artisans that you just cant get models of otherwise.

[Valkyrie]

Think of it like porcelain. more like china, actually. if it was a thick hunk, it would be like its was bullets proof, but in a thin sheet, crack. That simple.

Errrr... no. With the exception of some REALLY crappy recasts using EXTREMELY crappy resin, that's completely untrue.

All the companies that make original resin kits use good quality resin (or at the very least, not resin that's THAT bad). Also, the big recast sites like Hobbyfan and E2046 also use very good quality resin. And, of course, so do I.

The stuff I use, even in thin sections, is quite resilient. If you drop it, it won't shatter. And if you flex it, it'll 'give' quite a bit before it breaks.

The only problem with thin resin parts I've seen is that they can be prone to warping. But that can be easily fixed.

Say you've got a thin wing from a resin plane kit. And it's bent. All you have to do is dip it in some hot (close to boiling) water for a couple seconds, then reshape it and let it cool. In this case, just get it hot, then press it onto a flat surface until it's cool. Once it's cooled, it'll be like it was always flat.

It's really versatile stuff. By far the best modeling medium, in my opinion.

[Phyrox]

I don't know about that, give me an injection kit anyday!

Plastic is far easier to modify in my experiance. I don't mind resin, but I prefer plastic.

I do a lot of kit bashing though, so that might play a role in my decision. It's far easier to cut up and manipulate, at least in my experiance.

[Less than Super Ostrich]

Call me crazy, but I love resin kits... while more difficult to construct, they are much more substantial. The solid pieces make the final product seem more like a work of art. I actually think the heavier weight makes it easier to manipulate. The big problem (as mentioned previously) is that the smaller pieces can be very brittle depending on the type of resin used. Often times the landing gear needs to be crafted in metal to hold up the weight of the aircraft.

My 2 cents,

Brian

[AKD001]

I love resin kits. Some genres don't really need it to pull off a good kit. Take a VF-19, for example. Hasegawa can execute a gorgeous model of it using plastic, because of its general shape and lack of extremely meticulous details (besides the panel lines, which are cake) in 1/72 scale. That's all fine and dandy to me, don't get me wrong. Planes and stuff have general shapes, with large, flat, aerodynamic surfaces.

But some other kit genres are very hard to model accurately in anything but resin in a typical scale (1/100, 1/72), simply because of their design. Kits from the mecha series Five Star Stories are a prime example. They are semi organic; basically robotic, soul-infused animals with armor bolted on to them. The detail inherent in FSS designs require a medium that can portray such detail accurately and vividly. In this case, plastic just doesn't do the job, thus resin comes in as the primary medium. To this day, the majority of FSS kits are resin of neccesity. It is simply too hard to render an accurate plastic FSS kit comparable to a resin. The standard is off the scale. Cost is high, neccesarily because of material cost, availability and demand, yes, but the detail is incomparable. 'Just my two cents...

Check out hobbyfan.com's section on Five Star Stories resin kits for an example. The clear resin armored Mighty Series are good examples of a kind of kit on a level that plastic can't touch.

Again, this isn't to diss plastic; Alot of the gundam and macross series kits that I have and play to buy are plastic, because plastic suits them fine, but all except one of my FSS kits are resin. Things are better that way.

-Z

[David Hingtgen]

Yeah, but all my planes are plastic. It's the SHIPS that I have problems with resin with. Ever seen 1/700 or 1/1200 scale railings? 1/350 platform supports? When made to scale, they're so thin they're transparent. That's the stuff that's brittle. If it has any thickness at all it's fine, but when you have individual rivets engraved at 1/700, it's pretty darn tiny. (Sometimes the paint ends up thicker than the piece). The thinnest 1/72 aircraft wing is nothing compared to 1/700 ship bits. (Ever seen a 1/700 20mm gun? Those things are TINY)

[cobywan]

Kits from the mecha series Five Star Stories are a prime example. They are semi organic; basically robotic, soul-infused animals with armor bolted on to them.

I think you are confusing Evangellion's Evas with FSS's Mortar Headds. MH are completely mechanical and artificial. Some of the structures inside may look organic but they are not animals. Eva's are organisms with controll armor bolted onto them.

[cobywan]

Ever seen 1/700 or 1/1200 scale railings? 1/350 platform supports? When made to scale, they're so thin they're transparent.

Those components should be photoetched. Who makes the kits you building? Are they originals?

[VF19]

mortar headds just look organic because of the curves. they are not blocky like other mecha. they are very animalistic looking because of the horns, etc.

[David Hingtgen]

Open 2-rail/3-rail etc railings are photoetched of course, but some ships have solid railings. Basically a thin, half-height soild wall wrapped around a curve. Notably the original bridge installation on the Iowa's.

And as I often model ships as-built, and most kits are "as late as possible" I often rely on low-production/garage conversion kits.

I doubt even the best company could do a flexible yet nice and thin Iowa-class bridge solid railing out of resin, or the half-platform supports connecting the bridge to the FFC's 40mm gun director platform. Etc. Very thin, very small resin bits (so small they're transparent) are more fragile/brittle than very thin, very small plastic bits.

[waylandcool]

(Ever seen a 1/700 20mm gun? Those things are TINY)

Seen em, broke them and stopped building ships for a while as a result. When I start plastics again, as a precursor to some more expensive customs, I might try a ship or two.

[Phyrox]

I have seen resin with incredible detail, but that is because they put the effort in, not because it is a better medium.

For similar cash you could get an injection kit that would be just as impressive.

It really comes down to methods, not quality. Either form can be of high quality. It is the ease of plastic I like.

Maybe I am a goon, but I KNOW I would break/snap some important parts if I kit-bashed in resin.

[VF-17]

The one thing that resin has that plastic doesn't is the ability to make undercuts. Using RTV molds instead of steal allows the manufacturer to make undercuts. I have never seen any plastic WWII aircraft kits that have bolts continuously around the fuselage without distortion. Most mecha kits are made of simple shapes that can be easily created in both types of media. (Except FFS and a few others) But, where resin really has an advantage over plastic is in organic shapes such as figure kits. I've seen a few kits come close, but can't match resin. Just my 2.

My personal liking for resin is the availability for kits that probably will never make it to a plastic kit.

[tetsujin]

Actually, while mecha kits generally have fairly simple shapes, there is usually something that'll wind up compromised on the injection-molded kit as a result of molding issues. On Bandai kits you see that a lot in the form of molded-in "cables" (PG Zaku, MG Kampfer, etc.) misshapen and fused onto a flat surface somewhere, or panel line problems as panel lines make their way around a surface.

While a lot of great stuff can be done with injection kits (Hasegawa Battroid comes to mind - too often I think of injection-molded mecha in terms of what Bandai has to offer, which is relatively crappy in many ways), I think resin often is better because the people making the kits don't have to pay as much attention to how the molds will be made. They can devote almost all their attention to making the parts look how they want - and in my experience that yields beautiful kits. (I love my MG Gelgoog-J!) If you have an eye for detail or for a beautiful sculpt, I recommend at least taking a long look at some resin kits, mecha or otherwise.

[cobywan]

The resin Upgrade tub for the 1/32nd scale F/A 18 Hornet is so much better than the kit tub. And the kit parts are in-freaking-credible. Some of the tiny controlls and what-not in the resin parts are frighteningly delicate.

[kanata67]

I just have top wonder what kind of format mcfarlane uses for te spawn stuff. I've cut a few apart and know it's surface dyed/painted plastic. The well designed figures take one heck of a beating but it seems there are often poorly bonded/poured parts in many of the figs. great detail and mold work, but piss poor quality control.

Actually relavent to rewooh's question... anybody want to give a list of popular resin makers "ie ebay keyword searches] and pro's and con's? I know that the pics of the ultimate 19 resin looked sweet as all hades. I've come across a few manufacturers searching on ebay but I can't help but think that someone who has actually built one would know more than me

Edited October 22, 2003 by kanata67