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Abdul Rahim Al Moustapha posted an update in the group
Q/A & Help Group 9 years, 10 months ago I have been holding off on building the MG Sinanju because I want this to be my first masterpiece, where I am it is very difficult to get the right tools to do the job especially paint, primers and topcoat for gunpla (not easy to order online customs is a headache) so I stumbled on tamiya spray paints and I got the metallic red, black and gold titanium gold enamel for the kit but the spray paint s polycarbonate and someone told me this wont do for gunpla …. Please advice …. Will it ruin it?
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Q/A & Help Group
Not a clue. But I can tell you how to find out: your model kit comes with a whole lot of excess plastic (runners) – spray some of those with your paints, see what happens.
Cheap SD kits or “first grade”-style kits also make nice victims for this kind of experimentation – though of course while cheap that still costs more than just spraying waste plastic…
…I think polycarbonate paints are mostly for radio controlled models (the paints are resistant to damage from fuel leaks, and formulated to stick to the polycarbonate shell of the vehicles) – but I don’t know what happens if you try to paint styrene with them. They might just not stick.
Thanks, i am gonna try to paint the excess plastic, i am more worried about long term damage, with chemicals the effects might not show instantly, thanks for your assistance 🙂
I imagine if the paint were going to do any damage, you’d see it by the time the paints are dry. To be on the safe side you could check the painted plastic a week or so later and see if anything’s gone wrong… But, thinking about it – since there’s kind of an expensive kit at stake, it’s probably worth doing a paint test on a cheap model kit if the sprue-test works out OK. Kit plastic gets stressed in places (where it holds tension, basically, like moving joints and snap-fit connections) and stressed plastic that’s exposed to the wrong chemicals can crack apart. So if you can get a cheap kit to use for a paint test I think it’d be a good idea.
Also, I don’t know which version of the Sinanju you have (or are getting) – the initial release has an ABS frame, while the later ones (Stein and OVA) have a styrene frame. If you paint the frame you’ll want to do a paint test on ABS plastic as well… One of the reasons Bandai is moving away from ABS as a material for kit frames is because it sometimes breaks apart when painted with certain products (mainly the Mr. Color line, as those are very commonly used in Japan) – so that may be an important consideration as well.
This is the kit i have (http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN981597/Gun) released in 2013 so hopefully it will have the styrene frame, i have the stein otw as well 😀 ….
Will have to put my Blaze Phantom Zaku under the spray test and see what happens.
Thanks for the valuable information 🙂
Yeah, should have mentioned, the one with the bazooka included is the one with the styrene frame. 🙂 So no worries about ABS, and probably no worries about the frame reacting differently to the paint…
Tamiya PS paint won’t work for Plastic Model. It may not stick. But if you do try, please let us know how you go with it. 🙂
I tried the spray today on some excess runners left them for around 20 minutes to dry off and the paint sticks just fine, then i went on to step number 2 which is apply a gloss coat to see whether there would be any reaction to the paint or not, thankfully there wasn’t leaving it on for a day or two to see if anything else might happen. To add to what testsujin mentioned earlier, i did some more research and there is unconfirmed info that the polycarbonite is the same as the normal spary paint for plastic but it has additional chemicals that protect it against the oil leaks/grease of RC kits from Tamiya plus the rough conditions the RC kits go through (dirt, mud, water, etc…) hence why it is a bit more expensive as well, what they were saying is that it is mainly the same but why go with it when you get the cheaper paints that work with plastic just fine (different story for me since i can’t seem to get any type of hobby paints in this part of the world)