The Petersen Automotive Museum

Page 12

For text descriptions place your cursor over each individual image below!

Images below from: Hot Wheels® at The Petersen Automotive Collection - Los Angeles, California TachRev.com coverage.

This is how the Hot Wheels® vehicles begin life - as one of the Artwork concept renditions illustrated on the display wall. (above)

These wooden bucks on display have this information tag: "In the early days of Hot Wheels® cars, new models were hand-carved from wood at 4 times the scale of the finished product. Castings were taken from these wooden patterns, and traced with a pantograph milling machine to produce a permanent die-cast mold in steel." (above)

Although a blurry shot, I still included this image for the view of the vehicle patterns. This information tag reads: "In a later refinement to the wood pattern technique, epoxy shells were cast from the wooden carving. These epoxy shells included all of the parts of the finished toy, with all of their correct wall thickness, at 4:1 scale. The steel mold was still machined with a pantograph mill." (above)

This information tag reads: "Patterns are now carved from man-made materials, either by hand or machine, and the pattern is now 3 times product size. The machining of the steel mold is done with a combination of EDM (electronic discharge machining) and NC (numerically controlled) machines." (above)

This display shows the transition begining-to-end; from artistic rendering, to mock-up, mold, separate components, to the finished Hot Wheels® scale metal model cars. (above)

A detailed mechanical drawing for the 69 Chevy Custom Hot Wheels® truck. (above)

This information tag reads: "Some Hot Wheels® models are unmodified replicas of production vehicles. In such cases, digital files of the real vehicle may be adapted to directly machine the EDM electrode at the actual size of the mold. In these cases no large-scale pattern is made." (above)

A detailed paint and decal color rendition for the 69 Chevy Custom Hot Wheels® truck. (above)

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