"Question about Plastic miniatures" Topic

Good morning -

Please excuse my total lack of knowledge on how the 28mm plastics are manufactured. I gather that one of the biggest expenses or challenges is to create the "mold" out of stainless steel (assuming i have this correct).

I am wondering if there is delays or difficulties with either making these "molds" or in the way plastics are made.

I ask as I notice that quite a few of the companies that make plastic minis are releasing more metal product at the moment than plastic. I am wondering if that means the cost to make the "mold" is expensive or takes a lot of time? Or, is there too few companies that specialize in this type of manufacturing?

Hope my questions make sense and I would love the education.

Thanks,

Erik

in essence –

lead figures -mold cheap, quick to make,casting material expensive
Plastic Figure – mold expensive, slow to make, casting material cheap.

Pat

To get some idea of the difficulties involved in getting plastics manufactured take a look at what this company is having to go through to get a range released:-

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (Breath) AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Problems so far

- a dog ate my homework
- a big boy did it and ran away
- There, done
- what do you mean they are terrible? No they are not.
- oooh look over there – NEW things
- it was those evil furriners

Pat

I am wondering if that means the cost to make the "mold" is expensive or takes a lot of time? Or, is there too few companies that specialize in this type of manufacturing?

Yes, the steel mould takes a lot of time and some expertise to make, and thus they are expensive. But once the mould is ready, cranking out the models is pretty straightforward.

And while there are lots of companies making plastic products of various kinds, there are few companies that specialise in making moulds for gaming models from sculpted three-ups. Renedra in the UK is doing moulds for many manufacturers, and they are supposedly quite swamped in work at the moment.

To make a set of tools (moulds) for a plastic set of figures, you need to calculate with a cost of £50,000.00 GBP including sculpting. You also need to allow about 18 months from start to finish.

18 months!!!! I will almost have the entire napoleonics line done in 18mm and another half a dozen ranges in that time at a fraction of the cost??????
Regards
Russ Dunaway

Mick in Switzerland wrote:

To make a set of tools (moulds) for a plastic set of figures, you need to calculate with a cost of £50,000.00 GBP GBP including sculpting.

Some companies have been known to finance mould production using money from customers' pre-orders.

proxiemodels.com

There is a link to my blog. In the next few days I am going to get my daughter to film a little you-tube video and explain more about it.

Basicly, it is not rocket science, but I am having a pretty steep learning curve for sure. Lately I have decided to get everything 3d printed before I mill the mold, since the screen image and the final item in your hand are often quite different.

The parting line on organic models is kind of a pain without super expensive software. I can do it but will not waste time until I am sure the hands/heads and guns are correctly sized- meaning grossly enlarged.

I would not use stainless steel unless I was insanely optimistic about numbers of product I plan to sell. Aluminum is a softer alternative and some of the model railroad guys doing what I do are claiming 50,000 parts without a problem from an aluminum mold.

The troll took a month from start to finish and cost about $40. USD It was practice for me, like a lot of what I do. But it taught me how to do organic parting lines. I just now need to figure out how to make parts fit together better.

You can also pour a special resin around a master model that will withstand injection molding, but I have not tried that yet. I am going to when I get some time.

Thanks for the information gents. I was unaware that it took quite this long nor a number of the problems/steps involved.

Erik

I'd guess if you were aiming to finance it with pre-orders it could take a very long time

Yes.

But I probably should have said "at least partially finance".

I believe that most plastic figure companies outsource the actual mould/tool making to specialists such as Renedra. I understand that the tooling is quite a complicated piece of kit because the moulton plastic is injected into the mould at high pressure.

If anyone is interested in getting into injection molding, a local college (well local to me) has training course covering plastic injection molding. These courses are offered by the Akron Polymer Training Center, which is part of the University of Akron (in Ohio (in the USA)). There is one course called Complete Injection Molding that covers the basics. I think if anyone is serious about getting into injection molding, this would be a good start. Even if you just read to title for the class topics, it give you an idea of you you need to think about.

The Training Center:
uakron.edu/aptc

The Class:
link

I think this course can help shed light on the other things that might make the cost of molds. Am I too far off topic for this thread, maybe.

I'm with you, Todd. Fear the 'Roo.

I'd mentioned in a post on one of the WF Crisis threads that Howard and Tony might want to look in the Akron area for their plastic manufacturing and tooling.

Besides U of A, which produces some excellent minds from their program, that area of Ohio has some of the finest injection molding workers in the world… most of them currently not working in that industry.

Losing Rubbermaid, Graco, Little Tikes, Hoover, and numerous other smaller companies which has onsite production of plastic components and parts has created a very large pool of people who can do this work very efficiently yet find themselves bagging groceries instead. Stark County alone, according to the Canton ODJFS, has hundreds of highly experienced production workers wanting a job back in the business. The gentlemen who make the tooling are in a similar situation, and if they can make tooling for teeny-tiny little plastic gears and such, they should be able to make a Prussian riding a pony.

and I'm sure I'm waaay off topic.

To make a set of tools (moulds) for a plastic set of figures, you need to calculate with a cost of £50,000.00 GBP GBP including sculpting. You also need to allow about 18 months from start to finish.

@ Mick in Switz….where do you get this info from??? 50K no where near, more like 20k and thats doing old school using 3ups and resins, please get fact correct or use a different toolamker!!!!

Oh and by the way, look how quick PSC are banging them out it certainly isnt 18months per frame is it

Imo the resin models from Battlefront are way better than the metal models from Old Glory.
I've painted both.

I think that is where taking it all in house can make sense. If molds are going to run 20k, how many molds do you pay for before you could have all the equipment and do it yourself. So somewhere between 2 and 4 molds you have a pile of money for some hardware (and software). There is just a slight learning curve if you're not familiar with CAD/CAM, sculpting, part design, machining,… (slight learning curve, I mean several years)

Todd,
That was my thinking from the start. Learning has been pretty tough but in the end it will result in very cheap molds for me. If it ever gets that far. There are a lot of very simple little things that can cause problems for sure.
Still, in about 1.5 years the whole things is getting a lot easier.

I think the route Ken is pioneering will be more commonplace in this industry in a few years. I for one really want to follow in his footsteps. Still working on the time and capitol.

20-50k for a mold is crazy when you can buy everything for that. The CNC machine, the injector, and the fancy software.

The most critical part of the operation is the mold design. Aluminum is strong enough to make a ton of parts. I have not heard estimates of 50k units but I have heard of people getting a few thousand units from a mold.

The trick is to have a setup like Ken is working on. It might take all day to make a mold but the material cost is small and most of the heavy lifting is done by the CNC.

Resin casters make new molds all the time. Once the design is done then redoing the mold is easy. Your prototype costs go down when you can use cheaper methods of 3d printing. Your only checking for size and to make sure the parts fit together. Material for the mold isn't much and then you have mold design and CNC time. It might be $500 USD-$100 for the first setup and then easily $250 USD-$500 to cut a new mold that lasts for 2-3k units.

Run small production runs of say 100 unit minimums to justify setup costs. The seller buys them in lots and you shelve the mold for a few months till they need more kits.

The majority of the cost for plastics is to recoup the investment. Reduce the investment and you can make small runs and sell to the more niche markets that this industry is built on.

mmmmm maybe yourself and Ken could set up together and take over the world, only joking i would be interested to know the types of cnc, molders and "fancy software" you would be thinking of, but if you can produce frames at such a reduced rate then oh boy you will be rich rich rich!! or are these molds that you speak of for one offs in which case ignore everything i have just said…LOL

!!!OK ignore the last post!!!

KenofYork…..have just seen you youtube post…Way to go dude!!

I am doing what I can to spare others the growing pains and pitfalls, hence the youtube video.

Still going at it, but doing the molds takes a lot of time and to be honest I need more than one guy, or at least a clone to do all the other chores that keep me away from my projects!

BUT- like I tried to explain in the video. Cost estimates being thrown around are really high.

I am finishing up some molds that were killer time consuming and want to do a few simpler projects to get some things done. Still waiting to figure out just how damn out of proportion to make guns/hands/heads and then going to tackle another organic mold too.

Really, I got a million ideas and the mold creation is the bottleneck.

Out of proportion is a factor. If you took a 3d scan of someone then reduced by a factor of 56 (28mm ish) and made them multi-part, the pieces would be way too small. Unfortunately that may not look that bad until you cut a mold half and see how incredible small it is. I will say figuring out proportions along with overall style has been a good amount of my time for my work and re-work. I think you have to look what you have and compare it to a range of miniatures before you can claim victory or defeat.

So I think design failures could be a issue creating molds as well. I do wonder if there have been unfortunate people who have failed before they really got started, but after the mold had been cut.

I'm in a weird position that might be the special sauce to get this rolling.

1. I have a plastics factory up the street that will sell me plastic pellets by the truckload for cheap.

2. I belong to the Emerald Coast Community of Makers eccmakers.com. One of our members is really excited about getting into plastic injection and he has Solidworks and a really nice professional CNC machine in his basement. It's a Roland.

3. I have a struggling injection company up the street that I'm hoping will do small runs if we cut the molds. They don't do molds but if I can get his mold requirements then I can make my own.

I'd like to do some basic stuff like 15mm and 28mm building components like doors and windows. Something that is simple enough to make a mold of for trial purposes.

Eventually, we want to get a machine like Ken's for our Makerspace. It could be a while. I also need to build the Omni-Stand O-matic machine so I can stop spending so much time building those things and get back to important stuff like this.

I take my hat off to all you budding entrepreneurs!!

My female sci-fi prison troopers looked fantastic on the screen, but way too thin in real life. So proportions are my current stumbling block.

Well CorSecEng if your going to get rolling, look here: link for metal. You can have them cut anything you want, but sometimes you can find what you need that is a leftover. Everything I have bought is mill finished, which isn't exactly flat. So before you put it into a Roland, you may want to see if they can mill it smooth (and hope it doesn't take too much of a hit in transport) or mill it first yourself. You may need to figure out the dimensions of the molding machine first. If you are going to buy a machine make sure you can get power to it. Arburg and Boy have machines that run off of 230volt/3phase, which with normal house current can be used with a phase converter. Stuff that requires 480 volt, I would stay away from. I think you need a transformer and a phase converter. Other than Ebay hgrinc.com is a good place to look. The get machines in every now and again. If they work or not, to hard to tell, but if I remember right they take returns.

Ken, I'd normally say with minis you want to make them about as twice as stocky as is normally natural, with females blow up the T&A while giving them a barbie waist, then double the size of the hands and feet while giving them a head that gives them maybe 5 heads.

They'll look like mutants on the screen but probably decent on the table.

Look at Hastlefree and Reaper's womans and imitate them.