Arcadia 1/60 Super VF-1J Max & Millia Release

[jenius]

There were lots of Yamato hard points sheered off too.

Edited March 6, 2018 by jenius

[anubis20]

30 minutes ago, jenius said:

There were lots of Yamato hardiness hard points sheered off too.

Had it happen to 1 of my Hikaru 1A's

[Mommar]

1 hour ago, anubis20 said:

Had it happen to 1 of my Hikaru 1A's

Yup, my very first DYRL Hikky 1A.  I glued it back on and it's held for a decade now.

[valhary]

that's exactly my complain with Arcadia

they justify the overpriced because increase the quality but the reality is exactly the same toy that yamato make and if you ask me I feel it even more fragile than predecessors

[Mommar]

19 minutes ago, valhary said:

that's exactly my complain with Arcadia

they justify the overpriced because increase the quality but the reality is exactly the same toy that yamato make and if you ask me I feel it even more fragile than predecessors

They justify the increase in price because of an increase in manufacturing costs.  Not because of improved quality.

[Chronocidal]

They tried to help it look higher quality by covering some of the screws, but the stickers looked terrible.

Also, just inspected my Max yesterday, and the same stress marks are visible on the same wing.  I tested them with the TV triple missile clusters, and those attached easily with no stress from twisting, but I think I'm just going to permanently assign my Arcadia releases to battroid duty once I get them displayed, and save myself the trouble.

If Arcadia has been making an announcement about the problems, is there any chance they might issue replacement wings for Max, and maybe Milia?

[Lolicon]

23 minutes ago, Mommar said:

They justify the increase in price because of an increase in manufacturing costs.  Not because of improved quality.

Are you trying to tell me that materials and labor cost more now than they did in the past? Nice try. Everyone knows that costs remain stagnant throughout time, for all time. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pick up a 35 cent burger and fries for dinner. 

Edited March 7, 2018 by Lolicon
grammar

[Slave IV]

18 minutes ago, Lolicon said:

Are you trying to tell me that materials and labor cost more now than they did in the past? Nice try. Everyone knows that costs remain stagnant throughout time, for all time. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pick up a 35 cent burger and fries for dinner. 

Well played

[Mommar]

4 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Are you trying to tell me that materials and labor cost more now than they did in the past? Nice try. Everyone knows that costs remain stagnant throughout time, for all time. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pick up a 35 cent burger and fries for dinner. 

You just made my night!

[arbit]

I always get that twist wrong.

[seti88]

...

Edited March 7, 2018 by seti88
oopsi tot this was the 31 thread

[Froy]

Just got answer from HLJ.

Same crap. Send defective item to get a replacement, with no warranties of getting a better one. And no chance of getting spare wings to replace damaged ones.

Arcadia screwed it big time. How you could take a very good product in average and turn it into this?

Hope PF ver. of M&M be free of issues. This is really sad 

[no3Ljm]

17 minutes ago, Froy said:

Just got answer from HLJ.

Same crap. Send defective item to get a replacement, with no warranties of getting a better one. And no chance of getting spare wings to replace damaged ones.

Arcadia screwed it big time. How you could take a very good product in average and turn it into this?

Hope PF ver. of M&M be free of issues. This is really sad 

So, are you going to send the defective item back to them?

 

[Froy]

35 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

So, are you going to send the defective item back to them?

 

No, since there is no warranties I can get a good product.

HLJ won't check/open a toy for inspecting for issues before shipping.

I once had an issue with a defective product and got full refound and kept the damaged, no need to return it, since it was the last on stock.

I don't mean to blame HLJ, they have really good support. It is the damn toy companies and their weird policies for overseas buyers.

Edited March 7, 2018 by Froy

[no3Ljm]

1 hour ago, Froy said:

No, since there is no warranties I can get a good product.

HLJ won't check/open a toy for inspecting for issues before shipping.

I once had an issue with a defective product and got full refound and kept the damaged, no need to return it, since it was the last on stock.

I don't mean to blame HLJ, they have really good support. It is the damn toy companies and their weird policies for overseas buyers.

Well, I guess, you can probably try and resend it to them and do a cycle until your copy will not break. That's why it's good to have that 10-day window to open and inspect anything that's coming in from HLJ. And yeah, they do really have good support so I really don't mind the extra I pay for their item compared to other stores. I mean, I'm already spending lots of money on these collectibles so I have to make sure it's really worth it down the line.

 

[valhary]

Mr. K said:

As the planner, I believe the following points are factors in the high pricing of the products. (Maybe in you should read these with a “Considering the small scale of our company…” at the start of each one of these).

①：Firstly, mecha have lots of parts.
②：Thus, there are numerous molds.
③：For every project, my working hours are long. In other words, personnel expenses. Oh, by the way, don’t think I get a particularly high salary. 
④：The more parts you have, the more paintwork that needs to be done.
⑤：The more parts you have , the more building work that needs to be done.
⑥：Our quality standards for building work are high

http://www.macrossworld.com/why-are-arcadia-products-so-expensive-by-mr-k/

[spacemanoeuvres]

Also, it’s not as cheap to manufacture things in China as it used to be. This is a considerable contributing factor and it will only get worse. 

Edited March 8, 2018 by spacemanoeuvres
A word

[Cowboy17]

well, that seals it. Im never mounting the missles underneath the wings of my max and miria.  

[davidwhangchoi]

the reason this is happening is the mold is degrading. stick to yamato

[HardlyNever]

Not to derail the thread too much, but since we're on the subject of rising cost: wasn't 3D printing supposed to "save" us from all this?  Shouldn't this hobby, as we know it, be radically different?  Shouldn't we be buying blueprints/designs and 3D printing and assembling all this stuff ourselves by now?  What happened?

I know there are people 3D printing home-made kits and designs, but those tend to be very high in cost.  It's also nice to have 3D printing to replace broken parts here and there (like v2 shoulders), but we were supposed to be 3D printing cars by now (by some estimates).  3D printing has been the "hot new thing" for 15-20 years now, and it still hasn't radically changed what should have been one of the very first industries it killed (plastic toy manufacturing).

It seems like it still can't keep up with the economy of scale of mass producing specific molds and having (relatively) cheap labor put everything together.  Is there something else going on?

Also, to keep it a little more on topic, why can't we just 3d print replacement hard points?  Or replacement wings even?  It was supposed to be so cheap and easy by now.

Edited March 8, 2018 by HardlyNever

[Sanity is Optional]

3D printing will never surpass injection-molding when it comes to cost at production volumes.

What 3D printing will do is let you create parts which are more complex, or create parts in smaller batches without forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in up-front mold costs.

3D printing has a higher cost per unit, due to the increased complexity of the manufacturing machinery and longer time to produce. Injection molding has a staggering up-front cost in the molds, but the actual process is quite simple and quick.

To give you an idea of the up-front costs, I quoted out injection molding 3 relatively simple parts (largest was under 18"x6"x6") as part of my job, the mold costs were $57,000. I imagine the cost of a set of molds for a 1/60 Valkyrie are hundreds of thousands.

[edit] The true place of 3D printing is in prototyping the parts which will later be injection molded. Tossing $57k of molds isn't something anyone wants to do, so you 3D print the parts and check fit and function, doing your iterative design with 3D prints before finalizing the design and buying molds.

Edited March 8, 2018 by Sanity is Optional

[HardlyNever]

25 minutes ago, Sanity is Optional said:

3D printing will never surpass injection-molding when it comes to cost at production volumes.

What 3D printing will do is let you create parts which are more complex, or create parts in smaller batches without forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in up-front mold costs.

3D printing has a higher cost per unit, due to the increased complexity of the manufacturing machinery and longer time to produce. Injection molding has a staggering up-front cost in the molds, but the actual process is quite simple and quick.

To give you an idea of the up-front costs, I quoted out injection molding 3 relatively simple parts (largest was under 18"x6"x6") as part of my job, the mold costs were $57,000. I imagine the cost of a set of molds for a 1/60 Valkyrie are hundreds of thousands.

[edit] The true place of 3D printing is in prototyping the parts which will later be injection molded. Tossing $57k of molds isn't something anyone wants to do, so you 3D print the parts and check fit and function, doing your iterative design with 3D prints before finalizing the design and buying molds.

Yeah, that's what I figured, 3D printing will probably never realistically match mass producing from molds once you hit a certain production number.  Thanks for the insight.  Kinda shows that the "experts" that predicted we'd be 3D printing everything we own by now didn't really know what they were talking about.

That said, I'm still surprised we can't 3d print our own replacement hard points or even wings.  I guess the v2 shoulder breaking was such a common occurrence that it was worth someone going through the trouble and scuplting(?) one (digitally, ofc).  I'm a bit surprised no one has 3D scanned all the major parts of the v2 by now, though. 

[Sanity is Optional]

You can 3D print replacement parts, the hard aspect is getting the models to 3D print from. Scanning equipment that works at the resolution required is really damn expensive, and making 3D models of complex curved surfaces sucks.

[Slave IV]

Also, when you say we can all 3D print our own toys and parts...that in itself is the opposite of mass produced. The day will come and in a sense is already here where you can buy plans and print them out yourself. It's going to a matter of when printers are common to the point whet it makes sense for companies to stop manufacturing completely and just sell plans instead. That is pretty far off still. 

[HardlyNever]

Right, I guess what I'm saying is, we were "supposed" to be at this point already, if you were to believe some of the proponents of 3D printing.  It was supposed to be super cheap, super accessible, and nearly ubiquitous at this point.  I know we can (and in some cases do) make replacement parts, but the cost is still pretty high, and thus limited either to a really common problem (like the v2 shoulder), or someone who already has access to the rather expensive tech.

There really isn't an answer, I guess we just have to lump it in with flying cars and jetpacks.  It just seems like 3D printing was going to become more accessible a lot faster, but I guess not.

[Froy]

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

the reason this is happening is the mold is degrading. stick to yamato

This is my exact same thinking.

Sadly with this issues Yamato M&M VF-1J will never drop in price.

[jenius]

But the Yamato ones have the exact same issue plus the canopy issue.

[davidwhangchoi]

all mine don't and i have a lot of yamato vf-1's.   i haven't heard any yamato Max or Miria yamato missile mount failing and falling off the wings as common as arcadia. 

 

 

 

Edited March 8, 2018 by davidwhangchoi

[jenius]

I guess people are going to believe what they want to believe.

[sh9000]

I’m going to check my Yamato Max and Milia when I get the chance.  All of my 1/60 Valkyries are in Battroid mode and I’ve never used the missiles on any of them.

[Slave IV]

2 hours ago, HardlyNever said:

Right, I guess what I'm saying is, we were "supposed" to be at this point already, if you were to believe some of the proponents of 3D printing.  It was supposed to be super cheap, super accessible, and nearly ubiquitous at this point.  I know we can (and in some cases do) make replacement parts, but the cost is still pretty high, and thus limited either to a really common problem (like the v2 shoulder), or someone who already has access to the rather expensive tech.

There really isn't an answer, I guess we just have to lump it in with flying cars and jetpacks.  It just seems like 3D printing was going to become more accessible a lot faster, but I guess not.

Do you own a 3D printer? If not, that's part of the problem. We need to support the things we want to succeed. 

As for the hard point issue...non existent in any of my Arcadia Valks. They all work fine with no stress marks. 

[Ignacio Ocamica]

My M&M from Arcadia are fine (hopefully they stay so). I know some members had the hard point issue with their Yamato valks, but mine so far so good.

[HardlyNever]

7 hours ago, Slave IV said:

Do you own a 3D printer? If not, that's part of the problem. We need to support the things we want to succeed. 

As for the hard point issue...non existent in any of my Arcadia Valks. They all work fine with no stress marks. 

Damn... I didn't know I was the one holding this whole thing back...  Let me go buy 5 and kickstart this whole thing so we can all be 3D printing this stuff next year... Get serious, man (but I am considering buying a 3D printer for our workplace).  Maybe I'll buy an oculus rift, and a vive while I'm at it, because me not buying that is definitely holding back VR. 

Back to the hardpoints, is this simply a bad QC issue?  Not to beat a dead horse, but me and 3-4 other people had part of their backpack break on the super Focker release, and no one was calling the mold dead then, it was just bad luck.  This looks to be a similar situation to my eye, only this is getting more attention because the people speaking up are being more vocal about it.

Edited March 8, 2018 by HardlyNever

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, HardlyNever said:

Back to the hardpoints, is this simply a bad QC issue?  Not to beat a dead horse, but me and 3-4 other people had part of their backpack break on the super Focker release, and no one was calling the mold dead then, it was just bad luck.  This looks to be a similar situation to my eye, only this is getting more attention because the people speaking up are being more vocal about it.

I'm trying to recall exactly which part on the backpack broke for you, and I think I remember discussing it.  Was yours the one that had a mis-molded flap peg that broke the hinge casing when you rotated the flap?  If so, I think part of the problem there is that you did have a very rare case that hadn't been seen before, but looks like a very common user error, where the backpack gets caught on the backplate, and breaks when folding it.  I think yours is literally the only case I've ever heard of that being due to a mis-molded peg, and sounds like it should have prevented the parts from even being assembled correctly.  The fact that it hasn't been more common makes it sound like it's absolutely a fluke molding flaw.

The strange part of the hardpoint issue is that there should be absolutely no stress on those the way there is.  The wing and hardpoints are molded in a single piece, with no moving parts.  Those stress marks mean that either someone in the QC process is being rough with the wings when testing if the missiles fit, or there is something wrong with the molding process that is happening when the parts are ejected.

Edited March 8, 2018 by Chronocidal

[Xigfrid]

Well, you technically can 3D print the hard point that broke. Glue it back and call it a day.  Or even better, like @Mommar glue back the original hard point that broke and don't think too much about it.

On this particular case,  the complicating thing is that the hard points are molded into the complete wing so you want to 3D print the whole wing. Modeling the wing from the drawings should be straight forward. To obtain the same smooth finish and detailing of the wing mold, you can only do that with a DLP / SLA resin printer and because you need a functional and strong plastic you will to use rather expensive/experimental color matching techniques. Well for that you need your own printer