Dealing with warped Ameritowne panels

You certainly make it look easy.

Well, maybe a bit easier.  Bashing Ameritowne actually gets challenging unless you are just doing the standard panels without cutting them.  It's fun though. 

Lee, I've not come across this problem before. Have you tried submersing the panel in very hot water with a weight on top? Or perhaps, use a hair dryer to gently warm the plastic and remove the bend while the plastic is warmed up?

 

Dropping it in hot or boiling water, or just heating it to about 160 - 180 degrees, will soften it but its a lot of work and often it warps sideways or something else.  I do no recommend it.  

 

This warping has been the source of many threads here over the last year.  Its common to many Ameritown panels - usually the warping is minor, although I have seen one that bowed by 1/2 inch in the center.  Regardless, if you clamp and glue it will straighten out.  I'm making building fronts, though: I have no heavy full side panels to provide mechanical strength.  Also, if you look at my Imperial Hotel project you can perhaps see that with all the cutting at miter angles I'm doing, I need flat palensl to assemble my building.  This metnod works well enough.  

May I ask this one question?.... Why is this problem still coming to light?

Time and time again this problem keeps coming up. Time and time again the answer to this complaint is, "It's not happening any longer with our new manufacturing process".

 

I'm not trying to stir up problems. Everyone on the forum is quick to blame a problem on overseas "Quality Control". These are a, Made in USA product for goodness sakes.

 

"Pappy"

The panel I posted pictures of arrived from OGR this last Friday.  I think it is recent.  There is nothing really wrong with it and I don't consider "warp-age" like this anything a modeler should not routinely deal with.  It is difficult to control molded plastic like this perfectly.  I am most happy with Ameritown -- I have bought kits from other vendors that are warping in two dimensions.  I am very thankful that Ameritown are slightly bent in other one.  

This problem comes up from time to time. It is caused when our injection molder runs the parts too fast. He's in business to make money and the faster he runs the parts, the more money he makes. But when he runs the parts too fast, they get kicked out of the mold before they have cooled sufficiently. The thick walls in our Ameri-Towne products are prone to warp a little when the parts are run too fast.

 

It's a fine line that he crosses every once in a while. I guess it's time for another chat with him.

It's really not a big deal, Rich.  The hotel kit I got had panels that bowed maybe a maximum of 1/8 inch at the center.  You can just glue and tape them, even with just masking tape, and it straightens them out.  Wasn't a problem.

i've done several over the years - some were warped on arrival and some weren't. i always glued, clamped, reinforced the inside corners with 1/2' square pieces of wood, and never had a problem. To me it was just one of those things that often happens in kit building - no big deal - AND one heck of a lot easier than the tissue covered balsa airplanes i built as a kid some 60 years ago!

 

jackson

I received about 40 panels worth of building kits and panels yesterday, that I ordered for a big project.  I have not opened all of the boxes but the two photos below show typical experience:

 

1) Here is one group of five fronts to Lou's Cafe.  They are perfectly flat.  The other group of five (also Lou's Cafe) are also just as flat.

 

 

Here is one of a half-dozen Ed's Hardware and Grantano's Grocery kits I order.  I just picked this one at random to open and photograph.  The back and two side panels are flat.  The front panel is not quite flat.  It is not so much curved as bent at the junction of the first and second floor, but the bend is slight and it will assemble nicely.

 

I won't be putting this together as kits or I would post pictures of how I glue and clamp or tape them, but it really is not difficult to do.  (I will be using almost all of them on large building fronts with no depth other than the thickness of the panel).

 

BTW - The  building to the right rear in the photos is a six-story, two-panel wide, 1 1/4 panel thick bashed Ameri-Towne building from my layout, temporarily off while I rebuild downtown. 

The more detail the more un-even the cooling.  If you have consistent uniform cooling the part should be relatively flat/uniform.   The distortion pictured is nothing compared to some of the very old Korber parts.   

I have never had an issue with any of the multiple purchases of ameritowne kits i have purchased.

And I doubt anyone experience with it will ever have problems, but I can understand why someone who has not done a lot of buildings of plastic models might wonder: the panels look thick and hard to bend, and will glue really hold it that well? (Yes).

I really don't understand why parts that are knowingly warped shipped? Shouldn't something like that be caught in some kind of quality control or even in the packing process? If it is a known problem, why is it deemed acceptable?

I got a very good deal on about eight Ameritowne buildings.  I put two of them together and decided it was just too much trouble to make them look like I wanted.  So, now I do something else.  Maybe I don't have the patience to modify, but I have the patience to innovate.