Hi Mick- I'd appreciate your thoughts about the pros and cons of kits that feature these large resin components. They surely simplify construction, which appeals to a novice builder like me, but is there a trade-off?
Resin parts have their place and have been used many times on many kits over the years, decades even. As far as the material goes, it's pretty robust and if you know how to work it, easy to work with. That's not to say all resin components are of the same quality or easy of use, some resemble a chewed dog toy in my opinion.
It also depends on how the resin part has been designed and produced, older ones tend not to have sacrificial edges you can trim back to get a neat joint, you end up finishing off large flat areas and that can be a right pain, especially once flat it's then too small.
The biggest issue I suppose is adhering the extra metal parts onto the resin, there are as many different types of adhesive as there are days in a year so it does depend on your chosen poison and to some extent the type of resin. I tend to avoid super glues as they dry rock hard and have no give and in my experience tend to fracture and drop off, probably due to the two different materials expanding and contracting at different rates.
The same also applies to 3D printed parts, these are like resin parts but a different material and the choices of those materials is vast, unlike moulded resin.
I prefer to use an adhesive that's more plastic/fluid, glues like UHU, Devcon and Araldite seem to behave much better; I have a flex test on my window cill for a 3D print, a simple spring and horn guide glued to a strip of metal. Every now and again I'll bend the strip to see if the joint will fail; so far it's been nearly a year and the print hasn't fractured or the bond failed. The super glue ones failed days later, sometimes without touching.
Once you've established your prefered adhesive then there really isn't much to worry about from a construction point of view; one thing that does need further attention is the surface preparation for paint. Whilst the resin looks smooth naked it'll be different once you add paint, it'll show up all sorts of issues and can look orange peeled and it's usually not the paint causing this. Some resins are also quite porous (relative) and can take several/many layers to build up to a smooth surface.
The best bet is to prime with a filler primer that will key to the plastic and not be attacked by the top coats. Halfords do good primers, their standard metal one is good and they do a plastic bumper ones as well. Other alternatives I've used or seen first hand are Mr Surfacer and Tamiya.
It's important to take your time and get both surfaces as close as you can (smoothness) or else once the top coat goes on you'll see a slight tonal change as the light refracts off the surface. Satin or weathered models then you'll have no problems but high gloss workshop fresh and you could have a devil of a time getting it to match the metal work around.
So, in closure, yes the resin parts do save a lot of time, but you still need to take care and be mindful how you integrate that item into the metal model, sometimes conjuring up ways to fix the different materials can be taxing so what you gain with one can be lost with the other.