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Offline PMPeter  
#1 Posted : 03 April 2022 17:58:18(UTC)
PMPeter

Canada   
Joined: 04/04/2013(UTC)
Posts: 1,273
Location: Port Moody, BC
I know in the past a member of this Forum mentioned that the Vollmer building kits were made from a hard very brittle plastic. I can certainly concur and wonder if they were possibly made from a similar plastic formula as the notorious brittle C track from the late 1990s to early 2000s?

I bought several Vollmer kits when they announced they were closing and before Viessmann took over. So this would make it around 2014. Now that I am retired, I am finally getting around to assembling these kits and found that the plastic is indeed brittle. I bought a 6 stall roundhouse and when I opened the box I already knew I might have a problem because there were a few parts that were still on the sprue but broken with the broken bits in the bottom of the box. Upon assembly, I found that positioning the doors over the very small pins was quite challenging and involved flexing the doors to get them on to the pins. In one case the pins on both sides of the door immediately snapped off. So I decided to use piano wire for this stall on the doors but again found that the plastic of this particular stall door frame was so brittle that any attempt of using a pin vise and micro drill caused the plastic to shatter at the first turn of the drill. I needed to rebuild the door frame using styrene blocks. The other 5 doors were fine.

The roof panels needed a lot of work to align and considerable filing as previously reported by someone in another topic. However, once sized properly, the front roof panels could not be clipped in place over the pins on the door frames. Every single pin snapped off on the first attempt even after confirming by using a mirror that the panel and the pin were aligned properly.

So since all my doors are operated with servos, I am wondering how long it will be before the other door pins snap off?

I have now completed the Vollmer container crane kit #5624. Same problem. There is a pin and socket for allowing the hoist to swivel. The pin was too big to fit the socket. A little bit of sanding and an attempt to reinsert caused the pin to snap off. The handrails were already partially broken while still on the sprues. Lots of loose broken pieces in the bottom of the box. Attempting to cut the handrails off of the sprue with a Faller sprue cutter or Xacto knife resulted in almost every handrail to break at one or more places. While it is nice to have very small details, what is the sense if they don't even survive living in a box on a sprue let alone any attempt to remove from the sprue or assembly.

So while I really like the design of the Vollmer kits, I cannot say the same for the quality of the plastic. Hopefully this has been addressed by the new owners.

Peter
thanks 1 user liked this useful post by PMPeter
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