PMX-003 THE O

1/144 WAVE PLASTIC AND SOFT VINYL KIT

Modelling Lewismaster
Photos C. Spallanzani

The O is one of the true heavyweights of the Gundam universe, being one of the most powerful and most heavy-armoured mobile suits of U.C.. The PMX-003 is one of the few prototypes designed and produced by Paptimus Scirocco, the final adversary of Camille Vidan in the Z Gundam series, on board of his starship Jupitoris. It is also his personal mobile suit. Besides its heavy armour, the O has a psychommu system to go with the newtype abilities of its pilot, a pair of extra limbs and a super-powerful beam rifle. A nasty critter all right!
And it's a nasty critter to build, too! But in the end a smartly designed and funny to do one! This model is an industrial garage kit, meaning that it has been produced in small quantities using industrial procedures and some materials usually used for homemade kits, such as soft vinyl. The O is a full-action model, so the amount of plastic parts in comparison to vinyl ones is quite large, creating a kind of skeleton made of hard stuff, that gives more resistance and grip for the movements of all the limbs, with the very large and highly detailed soft vinyl parts often used to cover the plastic parts. Soft vinyl is a strange material that poses new problems to the modeller. It is soft and elastic (so it deforms itself easily), it's heavier than plastic, it melts and lose its shape quite easily with very little heat, it doesn't melt with any glue (so use cyanoachrilate for these models), it has little to no grip with most paints and has weird chemical reactions with some of them. In the industry it is used mainly for statues, figurines and the occasional garage kit.

The first problem to face when doing a garage kits is to separate the vinyl or resin parts from their mold residue. In fact, the not plastic parts are usually packaged as they come out of the mold, with large quantities of shapeless material around them. For these parts to be used, you need to cut off with your cutting tools the useless material and refine them. Be careful not to cut too much, because mistakes are harder to repair with soft vinyl! In fact putty can't be used in large quantities because it doesn't adhere very well on the elastic surfaces of the vinyl parts and fines don't work very well either. So study the illustrations on the included booklet to visualize the finished part before starting to cut it off the mold and good luck! When I was done cutting and shaping the vinyl parts I followed the usual procedure and studied a few modifications. Doing this kit, I had the strong sensation the designer of this model had already in mind most of the modifications that I added and in the instructions he hinted at them for the more expert modellers to make them.

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