"Cost for a approximately 6"x8" mold of 1/72 scale infantry?" Topic

I can't seem to find a straight answer in most places I've checked. About how much should I be budgeting for a plastic injection mold for a approximately 6 inch by 8 inch of 1/72 scale infantry?

I have miniatures digitally sculpted, almost ready to go besides a few tweaks.

I am aware that plastic molds cost an arm and a leg, but I'd like to budget how much of an arm I need to chop off, metaphorically speaking.

If you have to ask, you cannot afford it.

Year ago when I was in the elevator (lift) parts business, it cost us $50,000 USD for a simple plastic injection mould for floor buttons. I would imagine with inflation and technology advances offsetting each other, that you are still looking at a similar cost in 2013.

I'll bet it is expensive but less than what DAF says. Technology invariably outstrips inflation. That said, it will cost at least twice that of a metal mold. I think you are looking at $2,000 USD AT LEAST…from my gut feeling…and maybe more.

BTW, what have you got sculpted? Inquiring minds want to know!

does that mould include all vents, channels, runners, a cooling plate, etc.

Have you got a fully laid out plate, on your computer or have you got your multipart models and nothing else, no split lines and other complex stuff?

I can probably give you estimates on costs. but you need to know what size of plate the machine will run and lots of other factors.

GW does it in house. Apparently, you can set up with the stylus of the pantograph tracing the Master, turn it on, go home and let it run. The tooling itself is not expensive, it's a stainless steel blank. But, the capital investment in the actual machine that does the tooling is quite high, and must be paid for. And if you already own the machinery, why not use it as often as possible?

I have seen a CAD-CAM milling device at work cutting my own drawings into a plate. It was slow, with frequent bit changes, continual bathing in oil, etc.
I wish I could have learned a bit more about how to use it, but I ws too busy doing other things.

I would contact GW or Renedra
renedra.co.uk
to see if they do contract machining. If they don't, I am sure they could steer you to someone who does.

BOY, am I glad I looked Renedra up! A 1750 American church! Perfect for Lexington!

In the past I worked for a company that made model trains. They had several molds made for plastic injection. They were quoting prices in the 50k range. Of course, they filled their molds with additional accessories to get more value out of their investments.

accedemold.com/services.html

This isn't the company they used, but I linked to show that these companies don't post prices because each job is different and you can ask them for a quote. There are quite a few companies that do this now so get more than one quote and also research the company for quality assurance.

note they do edm as well… you need to stay at the front of technology.

Thank you for the straight answers. $50 USDk was about the price I'd been finding, I really needed to confirm that. Funny thing is, as high as that cost seems, I was expecting much higher costs around $90 USDk-$110k.

Renedra is one of the places I was looking into due to word of mouth. Practically everyone speaks highly of them.

@Who asked this joker: I have a line of science fiction infantry and a main battle tank for my game (www.exoshift.org). They're sculpted digitally in parts, so I can scale them as needed (1/72 for now), and have them 3D printed, cleaned, and molded for metal, resin, or a resin/plastic hybrid.

I'm at that hard point where I have crunch of manufacturing numbers to see if I can get metal or resin to a workable price point, or just wait for plastic.

The reality is, like Dreamforge, to get the funding for metal molds, I'll have to seek outside money, likely through kickstarter. And to do that, I'm going to need display models and proof of work.

But, the option is there.

Well Turtle, announce it here in the news. I will be one of your supporters. Sci-Fi is one of those areas that are not well covered in 1/72 scale.

As regards Renedra, do they have resources for handling digital sculpts? The examples I have seen of their work so far have featured physical three-ups.

If you can figure out what company Plastic Soldier Company uses to make their tooling, that could be useful – they certainly use digital sculpts as originals for making the moulds.

Sometime last fall The d6 Generation had a guest on from Battle Front. They talked through all of three different processes for creating a mold. In short, here were the highlights:

Three different ways of making a mold.

One using a pantograph. This is where you have a 3-up figure already made. A 3-up mold/cavity is mode using the 3-up figure. This cavity is put in a pantograph and traced to make a mold that is the size you intended.

One way is to use some form of zinc casting around a scale part. The parts cast around are then removed which makes the cavities. After that the put in runners and such in to make it a mold.

The last way, is to have all of the parts in CAD/3d. You make the cavities and mold in CAD. From there you put it into a CAM program which helps you build tool paths for cutting the mold.

So for all of the definition about the ways of making a mold, but the prices and lead times you would find interesting.

Pantograph $50 USDk – 9 months
Zinc $25 USDK – unknown time
3d Cad – $10 USDk-$15k – 4 weeks

One of the sprues I have is about half the size you want, and the other which I am under the impression is zinc cast is about the same size as you want. So unless they were way off in what they were saying, this is looking a little cheaper.

From my perspective if you had the sculpts and the parting lines around the sculpts, it might be easier to get prices from shops to make your mold. I think the big variable is how much extra has to happen to take the 3d models and get them ready. (Parting lines, undercut removal, …)

Yeah, I heard that episode.

In particular, I won't be using the zinc method, that's what Battlefront used for their plastic Shermans and that has been nothing but trouble for them and their customers.

If the service I use needs the pantograph method, I'll just have the sculpt 3D printed at 3x size.

But most likely, I'll be going digital and using CAD/CNC as that works best with the digital workflow I've established at the studio.

Thank you all for giving me a better idea of the hurdles I'll need to jump to get plastics off the ground.

If the service I use needs the pantograph method, I'll just have the sculpt 3D printed at 3x size.

That is not an approach that I would not really fancy taking if I was trying to use digital workflow – every extra step between the digital original and the production mould might be a potential source of troubles.

That said, regardless of means of production, I think it might be a good idea to get in touch with the mouldmakers already in a relatively early phase of the sculpting, they might be able to provide some consulting help on how to design the models for easy moulding.