My C636 model is progressing in terms of securing all of the needed suppliers and finishing the design. But I have one thing that I had hoped to do on these models that I might need some direction on. Because I plan to produce about 100 of these models and I am trying to keep the cost as low as possible, I've already begun investing in a pad printing setup and new painting tools that will make the amount of time required for each model significantly less.
One other area that I had hoped to improve was masking the models for second and third colors. Large firms making thousands of models will generally have a mask-maker spend hours making an expensive stainless steel mask so that they can just have an operator fit the model in the mask and use an automatic sprayer to hit the model with paint. This is clearly impractical in my case because of the low run size of these models. While I could manually do each model, the results might not be stellar because the edges won't be very straight. This process takes a long time to do on each model.
The solution that I came up with was to use a series of 3D printed molds to cast Silicone masks that the model could be inserted into and then sprayed. Several molds would be required for each road name. I do have some doubts about this though... does anyone else have thoughts about the feasibility of this or about any other techniques that I could use?
David
