Centurion

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My guess is no

Ludwigs one is nice but expensive.

[AlwynTurner]

I suspect the reason you haven't seen the Centurion and Chieftain in mass production is the complexity of the suspension. They haven't got the trailing arm or torsion bar suspension seen on the other mass-production tanks.

Alwyn

[AlwynTurner]

At the end of the day the manufacturers will make and sell what is most profitable and easiest to produce, so anything complex and different gets deprioritised, hence no sign of either tank coming to market....

Alwyn

[43rdRecceReg]

Any effort by the volume manufacturers of 1/16 tanks to broaden the spectrum of tanks available, has to be welcomed. But as time rolls by with ever increasing, and alarming, speed to the 'Boomers' on this board (..you know, that age roller coaster that terminates in The Ghost Train.. ), I hope it won't take another mini-eternity for the Centurion to materialise, in the way if did with the Challenger 2.
Hope that's its not going to be a little effort, a little late.

[wibblywobbly]

It can take at least two years to go from concept to production. Every single part has to designed and prototypes built, that means manufacturing every part as a one off. Anything amiss with the prototype and it's back to the design stage, and manufacture new parts, and then build again. That part of the process alone would take months.

Then the moulds have to be designed and manufactured. Huge cost.

Then the parts have to be cast from the moulds, anything wrong and its back to redesigning the moulds..

Fixed? Re cast the parts, re build a prototype.

Keep doing that until all of the parts can be cast, removed cleanly from sprues, and will slot together with perfection.

If they don't the keep repeating the process until they do.

Then cast about 10,000 of them for shipment around the world?
Warehouse space.

Cost? Maybe per day:

Team of CAD designers (expensive)
Plastics advisors
Machinists
Mould designers
CNC experts
Cost analysts

The list goes on, say three years salaries for each person on the team?
Design packaging, expanded foam, etc. Order 10,000 of them.
Storage
Transport
Shipping
Accountants

All of that and not a single sale yet.

...and we want it next week, and for £99.

Jadlam Models have the full range of Tamiya's on their site. The Leopard is £1220, the Jagdpanther is £1150

[43rdRecceReg]

Thanks for the sobering realism, Wibb. Sounds credible. I imagine that spending an age designing and refining a 3D component, and days printing it, can also be as frustrating and unrewarding. Hence the inside knowledge os the system, I guess.
Still, we can maintain our fantasy that some model tank manufacturer/entrepreneur out there has an altruistic spirit, and the sole goal in life of realising model Tankers' hopes. .. Or maybe not, on a bad day...

[wibblywobbly]

It often crosses my mind that the entire western economy, probably the global economy, has only avoided monumental inflation and public unrest due to cheap Chinese goods. If they weren't producing goods at the prices they do, and the rest of the world was producing everything themselves, then it would all cost many times more than we are currently paying.

We have now become totally dependent on them. A railroad is being built from China to Europe, purely to allow cheaper transport, which means that all countries have acknowledged the situation. It doesn't matter what local politicians claim about successful handling of national economies, if everyone has access to Chinese goods then everything stays cheap, people don't moan about the buying power of their wages etc. Take away the Chinese prices and the price of everything will triple, wage demands will go up, and the economy would be thrown into chaos.

If you take a look at prices on Alibaba and Ebay for directly imported items, and compare them to what UK retailers sell the same stuff for, you can see the difference. Will it last? That much is anyone's guess. With the top three powers currently sabre rattling, it wouldn't take much to cause a disruption to the status quo.

It's a case of sit back and enjoy the show.

[JohnWhyte]

well once they come out it be the case I'll have 3 or 4 on order 1 for my dad the rest for me

[AlwynTurner]

Anyone not convinced about the complexity of the suspension can take a peek at these



I plan on building these after I finish the JS2, but I think it's going to be a winter project. I just received today the 1/35 model of the Chieftain which uses the same suspension units so I can use that for scaling.

Alwyn

[43rdRecceReg]

It often crosses my mind that the entire western economy, probably the global economy, has only avoided monumental inflation and public unrest due to cheap Chinese goods. If they weren't producing goods at the prices they do, and the rest of the world was producing everything themselves, then it would all cost many times more than we are currently paying.

We have now become totally dependent on them. A railroad is being built from China to Europe, purely to allow cheaper transport, which means that all countries have acknowledged the situation. It doesn't matter what local politicians claim about successful handling of national economies, if everyone has access to Chinese goods then everything stays cheap, people don't moan about the buying power of their wages etc. Take away the Chinese prices and the price of everything will triple, wage demands will go up, and the economy would be thrown into chaos.

If you take a look at prices on Alibaba and Ebay for directly imported items, and compare them to what UK retailers sell the same stuff for, you can see the difference. Will it last? That much is anyone's guess. With the top three powers currently sabre rattling, it wouldn't take much to cause a disruption to the status quo.

It's a case of sit back and enjoy the show.

We used to produce the World's goods here once: ships, textiles, tools, coal, copper, trains etc... But then we had kids as young as eight working in factories, men dying of silicosis down in the pits, women turning green when producing shells
to maintain the last vestiges of Empire., etc., The difference is, this is now happening in China, Bangladesh and India instead. We can't compete anymore because we now value life. Unfortunately, we also developed a culture where people
have come to believe that doing 'f**k all for a living' is actually 'a human right': the feckless mantra of 'lifestyle choices'