Kato DioTown warping

[Irish Padre]

Just got some nice buildings in this range but noticed that two of them have distinct warping - I've attached some images of the worst examples. Anyone else experienced this ?

 

Thanks

 

David

[cteno4]

David,

 

yeah bases like this are prone to this happening once and a while, I usually see it on the tomytec buildings that use a cheaper abs formulation. I've bent many back to shape slowly and carefully by hand and also use the heat gun on low to help manipulate ones that won't bend easily cold. I did try a few times using very hot water soak as well, worked but was the most effort.

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[HantuBlauLOL]

Did you put it directly into the sunlight? It's really sensitive to heat..

[gerryo]

My experience with sunlight is the intensity of the infrared.  I got a New train one day and set it up on the rear deck to try it out. My wife called me for lunch, and when I got back, the whole train was destroyed, even the track could not be used.

 

Be careful what you use for heat as some of  the heat guns also produce infrared.

 

Gerry.

[Irish Padre]

Did you put it directly into the sunlight? It's really sensitive to heat..

Thanks for all the replies gents. No, I got it out of the box new like this ....

[katoftw]

It may have been exposed to heat before you recieved it.  But a little heat as Jeff said and you be able to bend it back.

Edited December 27, 2014 by katoftw

[cteno4]

Yikes that was some very intense sun! Windows should always have some sort of covering around things like trains to diffuse the light and sop up stray uv, ir, and even tone down the visible light as all. All these can yellow plastic, warp it (with enough high exposure) and fade out paints and decals fast!

 

Heat guns do put out some infrared from the coils, but the hot air is carrying most all of the energy to heat the plastic. It should be done on low and in short blasts. I don't use my big gun for this, but a little one I got at the craft store that not a lot hotter than a hair dryer and much lower airflow. I just warm the bent area a bit (both sides if possible) and the bend it back and hold for a minute for the plastic to cool. Usually works well even in the cheaper abs used in some of the tomytec sets. Those you can get quite some warps in and I often wonder if it's the paint job on one side of the plastic that cause the warping and curling that can be seen as its almost always curled/warped towards the painted side, not the unpainted, any how this seems to work on the painted structures as I think the bending cracks the paint a lot and removes a lot of the one sided tension on the surface. Once bent back (just physically or with the heat gun or hot water) they stay good.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff