"Tooling for plastic figures" Topic

I keep on reading that Renedra are slowing the production of
plastic figures. Is this there fault or is this due to the myth that only ex GW people can do the work.
Games used other Tool makers before bring it in house and those companies are still in business.
If You are having problems with your tooling although Renadra
are very good some other tool makers are just as good and have
as much know how. Don't just buy in to the myth.

D- must try harder.

I keep on reading that Renedra are slowing the production of
plastic figures.

Really? And where do you 'keep on reading that'?

Dear Toolmaker,

I am not sure what you mean with your post. I can list about six toolmakers used for wargames items.

Renedra are a very popular toolmaker and they are fully booked months in advance. They are used by many of the historical brands such as Perry, Gripping Beast, Warlord, FireForge and Conquest. Mantic also make their tools at Renedra. Renedra has built a good reputation for a good product and deservedly so.

As far as I know Victrix, Valiant and Plastic Soldier company use different toolmakers in England and they also appear to do very well.

Games Workshop now make some tools in China. I think they still make some tools in England too.
Wargames Factory make tools in Dong Guan, China.
Defiance are using a toolmaker in Boston, USA

Mick

If You are having problems with your tooling although Renadra are very good some other tool makers are just as good and have as much know how.

Examples?

There don't seem to be any good toolmakers for hard plastic wargaming figurines in the states, perhaps because the hobby is not as big in the US (proportional to the population) as in the UK?

Tonymaker?

Toolmaker:
"Membership Started
26 March 2012"

Hmm ….

You joined this website to ask that?

No reason to think this is Tony reidy at all…..

I keep on reading that Defiance are slowing the production of plastic figures. But surely it's not possible to produce minus numbers of figures is it?

Fixed that for you.

he's learned from that.

What, given his history so far, suggests he ever learns from anything?

Pat

Having spoken to the fine fellows at Renendra several times, not only are they excellent at their main job, but they also provide excellent service to those who order direct from them.

I imagine the reason they are booked solid is that they are the best at the job.

True, GD, but it's particularly suspicious considering that has been his MO and the OP is basically repeating what he and Richard have been trying to convince the rest of us is true, even though it's blatantly not.

Am make my own tools in a small barn at my house. Currently cutting a multi use office building sprue and an engine for a star ship.

It is very time consuming and the "proper" software is expensive. It is worth noting that if a model only is expected to sell 5000 copies it is not needed to make a mold that will produce a million.

Also interesting are the scores of plastic toys made in the USA back in the 1960's without CAD and such. Palmer plastics comes to mind and of course Marx toys.

I am working with some new plans to make the process faster and get better results. The OP had a good point. It seems as we get better and more advanced the old ways of doing things are now considered impossible.

I am off my soap box and back to work now.

Lovejoy.(nothing to do with antiques)
Iook on this site at "Bottle neck Renedra" 4 Nov 2011
As I said Renedra are very good but they not the only people out there with the ability and knowlegde to do the job.
and you get the impression reading through this site that they are the only people that can do it and that is not the case.
Toolmaker

they are the only people that can do it and that is not the case.

OK, I'll bite. Who do you recommend other than Renedra? And please, no sock puppets.

Toolmaker, I've had a look at that thread – it mentions a delay on some of Conquest Games figures. That's not really an argument for Renedra slowing down production of plastic figures, particularly as they say they hadn't even finished making the 3-ups, which is nothing to do with Renedra.

I have to say, I've not heard any complaints about Renedra's speed until this thread.
But if there are other toolmakers out there who can do a comparable job, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it. More options is always better!

Hi Lovejoy
Have a chat with some of there customers
The perrys come first due to the amount of work that they give
Renedra. That means that new customers play second fiddle,
and so new products are delayed. Now that is NOT Renedras fault, but unless the toolmakers that does work for
warlord, valiant, Victrix as well as armourfast and Plastic Soldier comes forward then Renedra will always have to much work(nice problem)
as I have ststed before Renedra do very good work but so do the Toolmakers that work for the companies stated above.

Do they not teach English in New England anymore?
:sigh:

Ermm, without getting into a whos the best toolmaker, which would be highly unprofessional, there are other toolamkers who can and will do as good a job as renedra, where do you guys think Victrix,PSC,Valient etc etc go to as they dont use renedra!! so why the hype? Renedra dont have the sole market for plastic figures toolmaking/moulding..

I must admit, I'd be interested to know who the Plastic Soldier Company are using – they have a furious release schedule! Does anyone actually know which other tooling companies are being used?

Names, people. We need names!

The problem the toolmaker has is Confidentiality.
The main issue (myth) that I was trying to pop
was that unless you were part of GW you cannot have the knowledge base to do the job.
Now GW did a lot to keep the knowledge base in this country(uk)but they did not keep all the work in house.
If new companies that wish to enter the plastic market think that you have to use Renedra because Terry was hyped by GW as the "king" of tooling then they will suffer delays.Also it is good business sence to get at least two qoutes so that you don't pay over the odds for your tooling.

Surely if the whole point of this thread is to bring other toolmakers in to the spotlight,

Unless of course that was not the whole point of this thread ….

Should I roll out the pop corn cart?

Well, there is that company the Defiance games use. They've managed to cut one tiny frame in a matter of months.

There are many skilled toolmakers around but do they all want to get involved with small-change, ant production run work like wargame figures?

What word got bleeped?

It isn't hard to find other plastic production companies such as:

ukplasticmouldings.co.uk

who do work for GW…

Mike

OK people … As from what General Disaster has said any decent toolmaker will not get involved in running down other manufacturers of any type of tooling (well not in a thread..) but the thread does seem a little pointless as regarding bringing out toolmaker names our confidentiality/advertising does play a massive roll in our industry…yes i do know this as i am the manager of one of the said toolrooms (not renedra) and yes we do tooling for many of the said companies above….

You have to know the secret handshake.

bwahahahaa……

I've spent a lot of time in my involvement with Defiance Games reading as Tony Reidy was researching plastics. Apparently, the problem with US-based plastics manufacturers is that doing a mold for a normal plastic item like, say, the outlet covers I bought the other day, requires a different skillset and tools compared to doing high-detail miniatures. Most of that work was farmed out overseas a long time ago, so your average tooling shop in the US doesn't have the gear and skillset to do plastic minis, and without enough sources of business, there's been no real reason to develop any of it.

Meanwhile, the UK has Renedra and whoever doing business for various UK-based minis companies, and apparently a whole lot of it. This is awesome for Renedra, though not so much for a company which has to wait months to release product, and not awesome for companies that don't use the tried-and-true 3-UP method, which is apparently Renedra's stock and trade.

Renedra is good at what they do, and so they get the business, but if they don't have the capacity people have no choice but to wait, meaning they don't have product to sell and thus no income. Also, you have to do with production costs and shipping, but if your choice is to have more expensive product which is high quality and which you KNOW will be released on time vs cheaper product that comes months late . . .

I live near Akron Ohio. I put in "mold and die" into a random yellow-pages site and I have about 30 potential mold shops to make molds. These are all less than an hour drive time away. So the tool and die shops are there, it's just a matter of finding one that you feel comfortable with and will do what you need of them.

Before everyone starts calling all of the shops around them, what do you have and what are you going to ask them to do. I would think that if they are just cutting your mold, you will have quotes before you now it, some good, some not good (most of them not good). Do you have a sculpt and need it put into 3D CAD world? Did you design it to have NO undercuts? Is it designed in pieces, or do you expect them to slice it apart? Did you figure out all of the parting lines (since those are so easy to do)? Are all the parts (cavities in mold speak) placed so they would fill in a balanced way? Do you know what the shot size of the machine is that you will be using? Do you know how how big of an injection molder you will be using (min max mold height, tie bar spacing)? How many shots (sprues) do you need from the mold? Having not talked with Renedra, I would imagine they handle a bunch of this for you, or point you in the right direction. I think once you have that figured out, how many sprues do you think you can sell?

I come off a bit strong sometimes, and this is one of them. :-) The more you ask for someone to do for you, the more it is going to cost. I think that is where a company that will work with you from end to end is rare.

In the UK Armourfast cut their own tools and moulds – I know this because they are a tool-making company with a founder/owner who is "into" tanks, so he started Armourfast as a side project. Clearly, looking at the very high quality of their tanks, and the trouble they take to make them accurately at 1/72, the skill set is available to make model soldier tools.

The real problem I would imagine is paying for the moulds. I believe they are not inexpensive items, so convincing a tool maker of your financial viability may be the interesting challenge. I know I could not afford it.

And China has the capability to make toy soldiers – HaT's products are tooled over there. But if you talk to HaT, they have difficulties sometimes, so it is still an art rather than a science. Therefore, people like Renedra, who spun off out of Games Workshop, have the specialised skill set to make these technically complex moulds work.

It isn't hard to find other plastic production companies such as:

ukplasticmouldings.co.uk

who do work for GW…….

@ Black Hat Mini…..These guys havent worked for GW since early 90,s!!!

Is there a point to this thread?

I'm at a loss to see it other than as some sort of twisted logic from the OP to explain why you shouldn't use Rendera because they're so good.

Richard wrote:

Renedra is good at what they do, and so they get the business, but if they don't have the capacity people have no choice but to wait, meaning they don't have product to sell and thus no income.

Months late? No product to sell? Hmmm…

@stickyfingers

No, but that wasn't the point. They have made toy soldiers before presumably they could again, so the original OP point about not being able to find toolmakers seems a bit odd when it took me 1 minute on google to find them…

Mike

General Disaster
You Qoute that the Perrys said that "renedra have made 20 frames since sep" that just continues the myth.
Can you name the 20 frames made.I don't think so.

ok guys to me this all getting a little childish, "toolmaker" you are clearly out to snub Renedra but i do agree that 20 frames since sept is unlikely knowing how long a mould tool takes, as for the others who are on a toolmaker hunt maybe you should ask the people who produce the goods at the shows im sure they will be more than willing to tell you who manufactured their tooling with pride, blood and sweat!!! Black Hat my apologies i see the point you were making now, but that particular company will never make these type of products again as they do not have the skillset needed anymore. (unless sub-contracted) of course… :-)

Can you name the 20 frames made

I have no idea when the following have been exactly tooled, but AFAIK they have been tooled by Renedra, and they have their release dates in the time frame from November 2011 to April 2012:

- Perry Napoleonic British Hussars (3 frames)
- Perry Napoleonic Russians (2 frames)
- Perry medieval cottage (? frames)
- Perry medieval men-at-arms (2 frames)
- Warlord WWII US infantry (2 frames)
- Warlord Macedonian infantry (1 frame)
- Warlord Zulu wars married Zulus (? frames)
- Warlord Zulu wars unmarries Zulus (? frames)
- Warlord Zulu wars Natal natives (? frames)
- Warlord Zulu wars British infantry (1 frame)
- Warlord ruined hamlet (? frames)
- Warlord Napoleonic Russian infantry (? frames)
- Fireforge Teutonic knights (3 frames)
- Fireforge sergeants (? frames)
- Fireforge templar knights (? frames)

Which should make for 20+ different frames. And that list is missing products from Mantic (not sure what they released in that time frame) as well as products released directly by Renedra themselves (not sure if they released any new terrain items or bases in this period).

Griefbringer
I know who did the resin copying aids for the warlord jobs that you name and they did not go to Renedra for tooling.

Well, if Warlord no longer uses Renedra for the tooling, then who do they use and when did they switch over?

Griefbringer
It's been said before in this tread,"if I told you I'd have to kill ya."Bloody confidentiality.

……so your average tooling shop in the US doesn't have the gear and skillset to do plastic minis, and without enough sources of business, there's been no real reason to develop any of it……..

Renedra is good at what they do, and so they get the business, but if they don't have the capacity people have no choice but to wait, meaning they don't have product to sell and thus no income. …… but if your choice is to have more expensive product which is high quality and which you KNOW will be released on time vs cheaper product that comes months late . . .

(my emphasis)

Or never…

So why all the marketing hype that we've had from Defiance Games for months and months and months? If you already know that your business model is such that you will be "months late" in deliveries & that you still have to develop an adequate production process then maybe you should keep quiet about it until you actually can deliver something …..?

At last…. hooray Etanger, the whole point of is to keep customers happy and meet launch dates, agreed things happens that will push launches back by a FEW weeks but not months..

chrikey the OP it a bit of a tool – a trolling tool at that. Wonder what his/her link to DG is? Can we start a book on how long it will be before some 'evil' Chinese company gets involved again? ;-p

(my emphasis)

Or never…

My more subtle attempt at pointing this out seems to have been missed…

Seems to me that if there had been a list of reliable toolmakers that had experience in making plastic soldiers Defiance Games would never have got into the mess they did.

They could have just asked around. But if it wasn't this mess, it would be another. Some people don't know how not to make a mess.

This is so cool! I love the intrigue and the drama here.

Sitting back and enjoying!

Apparently Victrix and The Plastic Soldier Company use 'SK Enginering', also a UK based manufacturer (and I always thought they used Renedra): link

I know that Dice & Games Limited can do plastic miniatures, they did the VOID plastics, and most (if not all) the em4 plastics. They do a lot of plastic bases and can do custom bases for a (significant fee): dice.co.uk/fs_gamcom.htm

There's also Ghost Studios in China (high quality Battletech plastics), could be the same company as WGF, might be an issue for some ;-)

The problem is not that there aren't any manufacturers out there that can do the job, it's just that they generally don't have any experience in the field. So when they don't think with you (or spot issues as easily) compared to folks that have been in the wargaming plastics industry for decaded, that imho is worth a lot.

That's why Renedra is a popular choice, that's also why Renedra is has more work then it's capable of handling. Last September they had the next 18 months booked, that's of course not viable for a new company or an exciting agile company. I personally also think that's the reason why Perry, Warlord, etc. are not making more plastic products. It is of course not a situation which can be maintained for long if the companies want to continue to grow, and possibly the only reason they still produce for Warlord and FireForge is due to having more then one customer (which can be an issue for the Tax man, don't know for sure if this is also true in the UK, it is in the Netherlands). Who knows, maybe Renedra will become part of Perry Miniatures ;-) They did indicate that they were not planning on expanding the production capabilities, because doing that would mean moving to a larger location (even if they found/trained qualified personnel).

Also 20+ frames in six months sounds reasonable, that 40+ frames per year, they do need to pay 10 folks and pay operating costs and materials (those blocks of steel aren't cheap).

Getting a very rough estimate out of them is impossible, you'll need three-ups before they even breach that subject. That pretty much killed doing business with Renedra for me, first produce enough three-ups (which could quickly cost thousands) to get an estimate and then wait 18 months for a production slot… That's no way to run a project imho, no way to roughly budget in costs.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the Perry plastics, most of the Warlord plastics look good as well (but are more expensive then the Perry stuff).

Now, why there isn't much known about alternative producers is that in the community it's mostly wargamers and producers of wargames, not the actual manufacturers. I can understand that as a wargaming company you don't want more competition, so you don't talk about Fight Club ;-)

If you can afford to wait 18 months and have three-ups ready, go with Renedra, they turn out great products. If not, you'll have to look at someone else…

Personally I found a manufacturer that made it desirable for me not to look at injection molding (steel) yet.

What's been interesting, I think, is the post-GW plastic resin stuff. The production costs for the mold are much lower and you can get a lot of detail. Apparently mold longevity is an issue, though, and there's a learning curve involved -- but, then again, there is with any format, isn't there?

From what I understand, both Avatars of War and Troll Forge are doing plastic-resin. I haven't bought any myself, but could anyone here comment on the results?

Troll Forge is doing plastic, but mostly with a composition that doesn't allow the use of plastic glue, which is one of the benefits of plastic imho. He said he can make a plastic composition that does accept plastic glue, but that this composition is stronger. He's currently finishing his self made production facilities.

Privateer Press is also using a plastic that doesn't allow the use of plastic glue, which makes it almost as annoying as metal.

The great advantage of this plastic is smaller production cost and less weight (which translates into cost for the seller and a good back for the buyer). It's still more expensive then steel molded injected plastic if you mass produce, but it's closer to casting metal/resin then it's to steel molded injection plastic.

For those who wonder over my obsession over plastic glue vs. super glue, I'm allergic to some of the chemicals in super glue. So when I glue some magnets into plastic kit, I'm having a runny nose within hours and have something like a heavy cold the next day. Gluing whole units with super glue is not my favorite exercise, as you can well imagine ;-)