- Ever wonder where giant
architectural models like this one come from? How do they get all the
little trees looking right? How are all the buildings the right size and shape and color? Today, we're gonna find out. I'm here at RJ Models in Shenzhen, China. Chen, thank you so much for having me.
- Scotty, welcome. - Thank you. This place is incredible,
it's so much bigger than I thought it was gonna
be when you first emailed me. How many employees do you guys have here? - We have about 500 employees. - Oh my God. This is no little model shop
- No, it's not. - with two people
sitting in the back room, this is a serious factory operation. - It is. - And I'm so excited to see
what goes into making all these. I noticed we've got giant
stacks of trees here that are being put on a model.
- We make them. - You make those in-house? - Yes, we do. - First, I think we should
go back to the beginning of how do you guys start
to build up the model? - Sure.
- Is that upstairs? - It's upstairs, yes. - Let's go take a look. (upbeat music) So we're now in your upstairs workshop and there's tons of model makers in every direction around us. (Scotty laughs) It seems like every place
there's a flat surface, there's someone working on
something very minuscule. - You are right, this is very in progress, in fact, this is a very
early stage of the model. So we start, we get a
drawing from the designers and then we clean up the drawings down to the lines that we want to use for CNC machine or lasering. And we work out where the
LED lights are going to be, and we wire them up. We cut the hollow-core. We spray them up and then
we stack them up together and run the columns through. The next step is to apply elevations. - Okay. So elevations for someone
who's not familiar with architectural models or architectural terms is the side views? - Yeah, the side views. You have your windows, you have your window frames,
you have your balconies. - [Scotty] So that's all
of your facades that go on? - Exactly. - This is now what we're talking
about in terms of facade? - Yes, this is a facade, so
we have elevations going on. They are made of different
colors of perspex, tinted gray, tinted blue. And for the blue one, we apply a film like what you would use on
windows, on the actual building. - Like on the backside? - Yeah, on the backside. - To get the color?
- To get the color, right. And then we apply fins, all
these different features. - The white and whatnot.
- The white fins. - And so those are glued on? - Those are glued on one by one. And this is where the CNC
machine will come in handy, because it will engrave a
channel for the fins to slot in. This is a block of chemiwood, a chemical wood. We machine out so he can heat and bend the plastic to the right radius. - So this started out flat? - Yes. - So what's amazing to me is that you guys are
mixing all of these new CNC, 3D printing, all these tools that are computer controlled with a whole bunch of hand finishing. You can't just 3D print
this from start to finish. - No, not everything can fit.
- Layer by layer. - So for example, because of
the dimensions of this model you won't have a ceiling
lighting but what you would have you have a core illumination, where the whole core will light up. - Awesome, well, let's go see some of your machine shops. - Sure, let's go. So we have a few laser machines. (Scotty laughs) - () Chen, this is not what we in the West would call a few laser machines. This is what we would call
a herd of laser machines. Oh my God. - They do the job. They run 24 hours around the clock. Lasering process is quite quick and they can get things done very sharply. We mostly cut acrylic because it works best with laser machine. When we work with ABS, or styrene, we use the routers. - Right. Okay. So he's cutting. What looks like one of these floor plates? - Yes, definitely one of the floor plates. And you can tell they're
on different layers. So he will do engraving, cut through and rostering. - And it looks like he's cutting holes or this is cutting holes
for the LEDs right now. - LEDs and also he's cutting holes for columns to go through. - Right. - So we normally cut the
holes on inside first and then we do the external cut. - So it doesn't move on you.
- It doesn't move. Maybe go look at your milling room, that's sort of next. It smells in here too. - It does. So these are all ABS sheets. They're very fine. This is basically engraving an elevation. - [Scotty] So this will then be sprayed in the spray booth afterwards. - Yes. And then it gets applied to the building. This material is what they call
a chemiwood, chemical wood. It's basically compact dust. - But it is actually wood fibers. It's not just plastic. - It's very easy for machine and it's very stable. - And it looks like you can get really fine detail out of it. - You do. It's easy to sand and it stays in shape. It doesn't go out of shape. - This looks like an
elevation map, I guess. - It's the contours.
- It's the contours. Contoural really like the actual term. So you got your guys here doing last minute CAD for the machines. - Yes, they are actually
laying out all the parts to fit on the table of the machine. - So they've gotten the
drawings already from your- - CAD guys.
- CAD guys. And then now they're just figuring out, what machines are they gonna go on. - Yes. And different thicknesses
and different machines and to make the best use
of per sheet of material. - Sure. - It's basically laying out. - Yeah. Awesome. - Now let's go across the
hall to the spray booth. So what happens is we have switched to water-based paint for
environmental purposes. - Which the local government
is really cracking. Paint is one of the things they're really focused on right now. It's basically water
that traps on the paint and it gets into a pool. - So just a sheet of water
that's dribbling down. And as the spray hits it, it
washes down into the water? - Yeah. It's the water wall. - And it's just so that these guys aren't breathing
the paint all day. It's not getting everywhere.
- Exactly. And also the paint is not coming back to the painted material. - Sure - So they are spraying a clear coat. And they are probably applying a matte finish. So it looks frosted
rather than just clear. Because the packing is still on, he can't really tell
how dense the frost is. So he needs to be really careful and check it under different
angles just to make sure that the spray is consistent. - Getting enough coverage. This definitely seems like
one of the many art forms that you have here of this is not just don't think about what you're doing. Is there airflow towards this as well? How does the paint all go that direction? - There is airflow coming from there. - Coming in?
- Yeah, coming in. - I see that's what this
big duct work is up here. - And then it gets extracted as well. - So all the air in the
room is moving this way? - Yes. So this is a temperature control driver about 50 degrees Celsius. - That's pretty hot. It's like, what 120 somewhere
in there, Fahrenheit. It's stuffy and loud. You've got a few things
drying in here right now. - Yeah. - Sweet. What should we look at next? - We can go to the 3D printing machine. - Okay. We can do that. I kind of wanna show
people what's in here. - You're curious, are you? - I'm curious. You've shown this to me once before and I think this is one of
the more special things. - Yes, this is old school. We do a lot of sculpting and casting in this room before
the 3D printers came along. - Right.
- Yes. So this is what model making looked like what, five years ago, 10 years ago? - Yeah. Just as short as five years ago, things change very, very quickly. - And so this is all your old inventory of molds and I guess blanks or
what would you call these? - They're just parts. And we still use them from time to time if we need to do multiple pieces of them. Casting is still very cost effective. - So these are what you
make the molds from. And these were each hand-sculpted or they hand-sculpt one and then- - [Chen] You hand-sculpt one and then you mold them in multiple pieces. And then you cast them. - [Scotty] And then you make a set and then you make a mold out of that? - [Chen] Yes.
- [Scotty] I got it. So we've got vases and bottles and little tiny ships. (upbeat music) And then in here you have your- - And in here we can have a lot of- - The inner sanctum.
- -the master sculptor. He's working on a gym equipment. - Oh my God, Chen. He's working on little gym dudes that are at the gym working out. And so how long has he been with you? - (in foreign language) - 13 years.
- 13 years. - So this year he will get an award for a long service award. Sometimes, all he gets is a piece of a photo. And he has to create a 3D object. - I notice he's got
some reference materials in the background here.
- Yes. - None of which are people
working out, I should add. (both laugh) He is entirely freehanding
this one I would say. And then back here, are all the treasures. - [Chen] Yes. - All the people. And then you've got mold making over here. - Yes. The old school way. So you get resin poured into the casting and then you stick it into this chamber and it vacuums and free of bubble. - So this is for removing the bubbles in the mold once you've poured it? - Yeah. So these are projects in different cities from the same developers. And they are what we
call the abstract models. - So these look really different from what we were looking at earlier. - It's quite monochromatic. So basically you have just
white and frosted and clear and the base is made out of timber, veneer and beech timber. So you get a contrast between
the buildings and the base. - It's lovely and totally different from what I think of when I
think of architectural models. You guys have made wood colored trees. - [Chen] Yes, in-house and we sprayed them different colors. So kind of different
variety, different species and a stippled mirror
perspex for river, for water. - And so why would a
designer choose this over a more traditional full color? - I guess this is for different audience. So this is not like a
project that you sell to people who buy houses These are developments to show different government bodies, or
they put them in the lobby to show off this is one of our projects. - So this is a real well-known one of the higher end
shopping malls in China. - It is, it is Shenzhen. Sometimes designers like to show people what they have designed. and also sometimes developers want to put them into their showroom or if they have an exhibition to promote their projects. - So it looks like you're
missing a few trees here and there are still little
touches to be put on things. But you were saying this
ships out today, tomorrow? - [Chen] It ships out tomorrow. - [Scotty] Oh my God. - The buildings get taken away. They are removable. So we will pack them separately. And I don't know if you can notice that there is a drawing line. Here. - Oh, I see, this is actually a cut. - Make our own packing crates in-house. We do single-use packing crates. We also build multiple-use flight cases. - [Scotty] One, you guys have
spent a ton of time on these. So you'd really hate for it to arrive at the other side broken. But also the customers
pay quite a bit of money for something like this. - Yes, they're premium products. We are talking about 10 to 100,000. It depends on- - [Scotty] US dollars?
- [Chen] Yeah, US dollars. - I have been terrified
even just walking around your models, 'cause I realized
that just putting an elbow down could take out a whole row of trees. You were telling me the other day that there's a different taste
between different buyers in terms of what a model looks like. - Yes. In the West, in general, they like less bright model. - [Scotty] So more subdued
colors, more muted. - Yes, more muted. But in Southeast Asia, if
they're selling a project they want it to look a bit more realistic. - [Scotty] And more saturated colors. - [Chen] Yes.
- Awesome. Well, let's go keep looking. I just wanna interject with
a couple of quick updates here from the future,
first, a lot of people have been worried about me because of the whole
coronavirus situation. I'm good. I've been here in the US since Christmas and we actually recorded
this video in December. Second, I'd like to thank Audible
for sponsoring this video, flights and cameras and
equipment and crew all adds up. And so I'd like to thank
them for making it possible for me to keep taking you on adventures. Now you've already heard
about Audible, I know, but it's been my go-to place
for audio books for years now. So I'm gonna take this time to tell you about one of my favorite books, which is Surely You Must
be Joking Mr. Feynman. It's the autobiography of famous
physicist, Richard Feynman. He was this insatiably curious guy who was always up to all sorts
of pranks and shenanigans ranging from cracking safes for fun while he was at Los Alamos
working on the nuclear bomb to constant unconventional
and unauthorized experiments to all sorts of pranks that
were just constantly running in between being this famous and brilliant theoretical physicist. It's deeply funny. And it's just this book
that I keep coming back to time and time again. It just has amazing storytelling. You can listen to it for
free when you sign up by visiting audible.com/strangeparts or text strangeparts to 500 500. That's audible.com/strangeparts or text strangeparts to 500 500. - And are we going into the 3D printing machine room. - Awesome. These are the fancy ones. - We have three of them. - Here we go. Here's one printing. - We use these machines when we have stuff that we need a quick turnaround. - I mean, these are very
expensive machines, right? - They are one of the best. - $50,000, $100,000 type of machine. There are great SLA printing
companies here in Shenzhen. Why use your own? Why own your own? - Well, sometimes we need
to do things very quickly and we cannot ask people
to stop their machines. So it's also easy to control timing and quality in-house. - This is SLA, right? - This is SLA
- So it's UV cure resin. - UV cure resins. And we have also we do different types and
we have the normal type. We also have the heat,
high temperature type. - So you run different
types of different machines - Yes, we have to, we can't mix them. - Yeah, got it. So what does this look
like when it comes out? - [Chen] We have some bits here. - [Scotty] Loopy ones here. - [Chen] Yep. That is waiting to get into a bath. - [Scotty] I see we've got a van there ready to go. Quite large-scale there.
- Yeah. - And then all of this
is support material here. - They get broken off. They get trimmed off. And we can head out to
look at some CNC machines. - Yeah. So these are much bigger
than your other ones. These are not little routers. - No, they're more heavy-duty. - This is what I would think
of when I think of a CNC mill. And so why use these over those? - They can do deeper cuts faster. - With pressure. - [Chen] And they have a bigger bed. - [Scotty] And so again, that looks like you're doing some sort of contour. - [Chen] Yes, like a base. - [Scotty] I know a lot of
people would be horrified to see that you're
cutting chemiwood in here. Usually, these things are only metal, maybe a little bit of plastic. - We cut wood as well. This came out from the machine. So this is a chemiwood. This will be standard bath sprayed. - I love how many processes you
guys are all using together. Particularly in Shenzhen, when I come to factories, I'll see, they're just a CNC shop or
they're just a laser shop or they're just an injection
molding shop or whatever. And you guys have it all in-house and you're interchangeably
using all the different pieces. - We have to be very creative. - I wanna see how you're doing landscaping because that's the thing
that when people think of modeling, they think
of model railroad trees. - Maybe you can make some trees. - I would like to try making a tree. - Yeah. Let's do it. (in foreign language) - So they've got little plastic- - [Chen] Trunks and branches. And they dip it into a glue, white glue. And then into the flocking. - [Scotty] Oh my goodness. So this is all your tree inventory here, your excess inventory.
- [Chen] Yes. - That's gorgeous. So wire trunk. - [Chen] Wire trunk, wire branches. - And then flocking just
like that over there. Is it sprayed or not?
- It is already colored. - [Chen] The flock is already colored. - And then you sprayed the trunk before you put the flocking on. That is pretty cool. When I came by the other day,
they were making larger trees. - Yes. - I would love to show people
a bit about that process. Is it? - Let's get you started. - Okay. Let me try it. - So what you do, you try to make a bunch of wires. - I make a bundle. And so the number of turns
is the size of the trunk? - Exactly. - So now we we've
snipped the whole bundle. So now we just have a straight bundle. - Yup. And then she stumbling up. And then twist it together. - Okay. Yeah. (instrumental music) This will be the bottom of the trunk and then all the branches up here. It's literally just a twist of wire. So you show me. So about half. Half, half. Oh three. Like this? And then twist? Like that? Twist? Yeah, okay. So just keep splitting, keep
splitting, keep splitting. Oh my goodness. I'll try this one. I'll try that one. She's so fast. - [Chen] Try to catch up, Scotty. - I know, I'm trying. - (in foreign language) - [Chen] She says, go with the flow. - Go with the flow. - [Chen] Yeah, go with the flow. - Okay. Like that? (instrumental music) That's amazing. So just continuing to twist them out. She split them one more time. The bundles are like three and four now. - [Chen] So you open them up. - I'm almost done. Mine looks way worse than hers. Now we trim. Is there a rule of thumb to trimming here? - [Chen] Nope. Anything goes. - Anything goes. Yeah. That's what I was afraid of. We're onto the gluing part. (instrumental music) Little bits. I see, we're trying to spread it out. It's good enough. - [Chen] Mixing color on the fly. - Oh my God. That's what I thought was happening. So he's literally just mixing from red, green and blue and white and black.
- Yes. (Scotty laughs) - That's insane, Chen. Just a little bit of this and a little bit of that gives you brown. That was it. Oh my God, you guys move so fast. And then all your different
tubs of flocking here. - [Chen] Exactly. (instrumental music) It's like making tree tempura. Now your turn. - Okay, my turn. So just a little bit like this. (instrumental music) Stick it in there. Wow. That's pretty impressive. This one definitely looks a little better. But you're right, all trees are different - [Chen] They don't need
to look exactly the same. - They don't have to be perfect. They just have to be tree-like. That's really cool. Thank you very much. (in foreign language) - (in foreign language) - How long have you been making trees? - (in foreign language) - (in foreign language) Seven years. (Scotty laughs) - A tree expert. That's amazing. So all you model railroaders out there now know the secret from the experts. The factory professional- - [Chen] It's not rocket science. - No, it doesn't seem
like anything in here is but the combination of it all, every little piece is necessary to create the right illusion. Where should we head next? We've done 3D printing. We've done trees. We were gonna do electrical.
- Yes. - And talk about LEDs
because everybody likes LEDs. - Yep. - Let's go do that. - So this nice lady here,
she is putting on LEDs on the ceiling, on the floor plates. - [Scotty] So these were
like the floor plates that we saw being laser cut that had all the little holes. So this is the floor plate that was cut. - So this is a ceiling. - Sorry. - So it'll go underneath the floor plate - So it is a floor plate as
well and that's the ceiling. - And then there'll be another
flooring on top of this. So this is the bottom of the floor plate. - And as you can see,
there's a big opening is where the core sits. - So this will be, then be
swatted down over that core. - Your cable goes through the
core, goes all the way down. - And then each of these is
just a little surface mount LED just like you would use
in standard electronics. And they're all hand-wired together. So how long does it take
someone to solder up something like this? - Half an hour. 10 minutes to half an hour. - It would take me a lot longer than that. And this is still less work than just someone drawing the PCB out. And so you might make 50 of these or 100 of these
depending on the building. - Yeah. If they are all exactly
the same, we would use PCB. - Sure. I see. And you're starting with just colorful ribbon cable
here as you're starting, just to so you can keep
everything straight. - If the building is very tall then you have a big bunch
of wires going down. - You have a huge bundle that
you then have to deal with and figure out what's what. - I see. She's got them all numbered here. - Yep. Floor numbers. - And then one bundle per floor and then you know what color per floor. - Yes. Also because they split
into different units because this is an apartment building. So that way you can control
each unit individually. - And why is that important? - For example, I want to buy
a unit in this apartment. I want to know which one is sold or I prefer a particular corner. And then I wanna see the one- - So a salesperson can light that up? - Yeah.
- I got it. That's crazy. So that recurring theme, hot glue solder. Rails. - Now, moving on to this one You can see the wiring inside. - Wow. Are we actually building
onto the real core now? - It is. - So this is the real core in here. And now we're wiring on that core. - Correct. - It's interesting though. It seems like this is still very loose and stuff's moving around and we're not too worried
about heights and things - No, but once you put in the partitions and then it will control the
height, floor to floor height. - So wire it first and then put your partitions down. So really nice connectors. - This gets connected
to one of these boxes. And these boxes will
have all your controllers and your computers. This is not hooked up.
- I see, not hooked up. - We have something that
is hooked up downstairs. - Power supplies and stuff. - Power supplies. Remember we said that we have to pack our buildings separately So we use that to do the connection when it is being assembled. - So that will be the connector
just for this building? - Yep. - Right. I got it. This makes me nervous 'cause it's like, I know from walking around now exactly how much work has already
been put into this. And yet everything sort of
in this half-finished state, you don't wanna be the guy to accidentally snap this one here,
- No, probably not. - 'cause then all of this
needs to be rewired again. - You will be very unpopular. - So we were asking originally, are these something you bought? 'Cause neither Kenneth nor
I recognize them, but no this is actually something
they're making in-house. It's a piece of just
acrylic and then two rails with surface mount LEDs
soldered in between. So I wanna take another walk around now that we've kind of seen
all the different departments, and see how this all
comes together out here on the modeling floor again. So this is the one we
were looking at earlier - And now he's fixing a light bulb. - So we're doing some serious surgery here to get a new bulb in. - [Chen] So it does happen. - Oh my God. Let me see if I understand
how this all comes together. First we start with the core. - Yes, core.
- Which is just glued together acrylic
into a hollow column. And then we've got all of the floor plates which are laser cut acrylic. - Yes. - And then we have the lighting, the ceiling panels that go underneath. Those are ABS routed? - Correct. They are also CNC pieces. - But they were laser cut holes. - I'm sorry. Laser cut holes for the LED. And they are- - And then an ABS ring
that goes around the top. - Like a donut that goes around. - To get that spacing
for the wires and stuff. And then those are glued together and assembled into all of the floors which are then... Oh, sorry. The ceiling panels are wired
up in the electrical department to get all the LEDs in them. And then they're all glued together, stacked up wired onto the core.
- Correct. - And now we're putting in columns, which are CNC, it looks like? - Yes. - And we're starting to do the hand-gluing and assembly here. And then we'll get furniture from the model. - If they are required. And then you will have your
elevation, your facades. - Put your facades on the outside, which will be some
combination of laser cut and CNC mill.
- CNC mill. - You were saying you
sometimes UV print on those. - Correct. - We've talked a bit about
UV printers on another video. This is tying into everything we've seen before in other videos. And then you hand paint as well. - We do hand touch up. But we do most of our
spraying in the spray booth. And then you go downstairs
and do landscaping and trees and grass and water.
- Grass, trees, and water. - And beeches and-
- Correct - -whatever else.
- Cars. - I think I pretty much understand
how this comes together. I don't think I could do it. - And as you can see some metal etching that we have not got into. - So this is your design
and you'll send it out. This is kind of probably like the process for the metal business cards I make so like chemical etching. - It is exactly the same process. So this is a solid piece of acrylic. And it will get cladded by this facade. - [Scotty] On all the sides? - [Chen] On all the sides. - [Chen] And they will
be lit from the bottom. So your windows will flow and the walls will be metal. - So the acrylic basically
becomes a light pipe for the whole building. You have some buildings
that are really high detail which are the ones that
the model is actually for. And then you have some buildings
that are just background. - So these are the background,
the context buildings. - And so those are the ones
that'll be just roughed in. Just to sort of get a sense of what else is in the neighborhood. Well, why don't we go take a look at some of your finished models. We've been looking at
stuff that's in progress. But let's go look at what this looks like when you're fully done. So I recognize this one. - Yes. - Tallest building in the world right now. Is that still true? - Yeah. Burj Khalifa, this is a 1:1,000 scale and then this is the Burj Arab. - [Scotty] In Dubai as well? - Yes, also in Dubai. And this is Swiss Re Tower or better known as The Gherkin in London. - This model goes all the way, I can't even see the core. All I can see is little
tiny people and offices. We gotta show off what's going on here 'cause this blew me away
when I first saw it. You've got moving boats. - Yes. And this is also
very analog actually. So you have magnets and then you have a chain that goes on and around it. - So this is just magnets
moving underneath the water. - Amazing. - Every unit has a swimming pool. That's all you need to know. - So pool here, apartment here, that goes with that pool. And this one, you've
got a working TV screen. - Yes, we do. We have the working TV, it's a Megatron - The Megatron's showing soccer. It no longer looks like magic. I can start to think about I understand how this
traffic light was made. I understand where that grass came from. It's a testament to what happens when you bring together a
bunch of different skillsets and a whole bunch of work by a whole bunch of different people. (upbeat music) Chen, thank you so much for having me. - Thank you, Scotty. - This is incredible to see
what you guys are doing. And I think it's really different from what we've seen in a
lot of Strange Parts videos. But it's also combining together a whole bunch of different techniques and tools that people are familiar with. So it's really cool to see the level to which you guys are taking this and what you're capable of. - Thank you. I hope you enjoyed. - Yeah, it was fantastic. I'm glad you sent me an email, probably what, a year ago now? Saying, "Hey Scotty you should
come check out our factory." - We've been busy too. - I figured as much. So thank you. Thank you for taking all
the time to show us around. If people wanna learn more about RJ Models where should they go? - They should visit our website, www.rjmodels.com. - And we'll put a link to
that down in the description. You guys aren't sponsoring this. You were just kind enough to show me around and
I really appreciate it. This has been really special. - Thank you for your time. - Thank you. I'm Scotty from Strange Parts. If you enjoyed this video make sure you hit that
subscribe button down below. We've got more factory
videos coming up soon. I'll see you again soon. (upbeat music)
