Resurrecting this almost 2 year old thread!
As noted in this thread, the Aoshima 1701-D is magnificent and nearly perfect. The detail level is utterly amazing for a pre-built model. The main complaint is a good one: the magnet used to hold the saucer onto the stardrive is too weak for the weight of the enormous saucer. Simply turning the ship upside down causes the saucer to fall off. Even right-side up, the saucer can fall off if the ship is shaken or tilted suddenly.
One youtube reviewer went so far as to superglue the saucer to the stardrive so that he could handle it more regularly.
I decided to add additional rare-earth magnets to strengthen the bond between the two sides. This solution seems to have worked. The saucer attaches to the neck with much more "snap" and I can handle it without worrying about the saucer flopping to the floor and getting damaged. I can even hold it upside down. The bond isn't nearly as strong as the DST 1701-D (I'm not sure I'd want it that strong anyway) but it's much better than before.
Taking the ship apart was pretty straightforward. However, there is a very very light application of some kind of glue around all of the edges that has to be broken. You can see in the pictures where the paint is a bit marred due to the breaking of the glue bond. However, due to the clever way the ship is constructed, this shouldn't be visible once the ship is closed. The bonded areas are generally inside of a lip which hides the paint damage you see above.
Taking apart the ship and breaking the glue seal will increase the creakiness of the plastic however, so when putting the ship back together it might be advisable to use modeling glue to reseal the ship. I haven't done so yet because I've been thinking about putting some thin frosted acrylic sheets inside the ship to diffuse the light and hide the internal wiring that is sometimes visible through the windows if one looks very closely.
