Slide-molded

I'm sure there is a more detailed explanation available, but basically a "standard" mould has two halves, basically male & female halves which come together leaving a space into which the molten plastic is injected.

"Slide Moulds" are essentially moulds with more than two parts, you have the two halves, then a third part that fits in, it means, for example, a gun barrel can be moulded with a hole in the end.

The whole "Slide Mould" hype seems to be prevalent in Dragon advertising, but I don't think the concept is particularly new or restricted to armour models.

Some more help here,

It's interesting, if you google "slide moulds" or "slide molds", most responses are about Dragon & Tristar kits, so much for advertising.

Hope this helps (a bit)

To add to what max says; look at slide-molded tracks and rifle barrels. With two-part molds the ends of track links are typically flat, devoid of detail. With slide-molds the ends have indented or concave detail. Same with barrels. Instead of a solid rod, there is a muzzle opening. Aircraft kits benefit in the canopy department, slide-molding capturing complex curves. Pretty amazing when you see it.

True, but right now Dragon (and their affiliate cyber-hobby), Trumpeter, Academy, Tristar and to some degree AFV Club all use it in varying amounts. DML probably does the most, but with the demand for accuracy and the lack of desire of some folks to carry out what used to be simple tasks (like drilling out gun barrels or hollowing out track teeth) it has become both popular and prevalent.

It's another reason why the average kit prices are up around $42-45 now as well.

Cookie Sewell

First time I ever ran into it were the cannon barrels on the Emhar 1/35 scale WW I Mk IV tank. Couldn't figure out for the life on me how they molded the holes in the end of the barrels, which were aligned parallel with the sprues.

Pat

We could expand this to gated molds now, too. Some Trumpeter kits have pieces of sprue with three colors of plastic on it, including the clear for aircraft canopies and such.