"Sculptors should be required to do test assembly" Topic

Bought a box of these Harvesters to maybe use as Tyranids. Went to assemble a test model.

The joint between leg and body is a small depression in the body and a tiny ball on the leg. So there is virtually NO surface area for glue to hold on to.

Sure I can pin, but eff me I should not be doing the sculptor's work. Just put a hole in the socket and a pin on the leg.

In other news, old man yells at cloud.

I wonder if the reaponse would be "thst way you can pose them however you want." Do people buy plastics for the posability or do most just want them assembledand and done?

Sure, I like posing each figure separately for skirmish gaming. Though if I were to build massed troops, like Napoleonics or SYW, I would want as many near similar poses as possible in the same unit. I too have a box of these bug figures. I have heard or seen from another source that assembly can be difficult.
Thank you for the reminder, as I will soon be into this box of figures

Worst example of this, for me, was the Blood Bowl Khemri team.
GW took the plastic multi part skeletons, and then cast them in metal. I don't care how many people here swear by Super Glue, but these were a finger sticking, inadequate bond nightmare.
AND THEN, they also had metal football pads.
A pox on them! Pshaw! Ptooie!

I would have loved to hold a pistol to the head of whoever had that bright idea and challenged him to assemble them.
Harrumph.

Not that it upset me or anything…. 🙄

Dude, I hate that cloud!

I buy multipart minis to vary poses. I am routinely distressed by the lack of instructions (and was happy when I found some recently that had matching part numbers on the sprue … this arm goes with that torso, etc.)

After I test fit, if it is not going well, I get the greenstuff.

BTW I am relatively confident they do assemble stuff when they design. I can't imagine a design process when you don't test. So, my take on your complaint is back to the instructions – don't assume that if an assembly is intuitive to you, it is intuitive to all your customers.

Hint: A tiny flush joint with no pin or socket is the very worst kind of joint. Accelerant for superglue even degrades the sheer strength.

Try assembling some Skaven with 7 to 9 different pieces.

So don't buy Garbage Worstshop.

I couldn't agree more. I've had/seen very few horse/rider combos where they riders actually properly fits on the horses.

Sundance +1
Try assembling a cavalry pack with the rider's legs and waist cast with the horse, and a separate torso.

This could have happened after the sculptor was done. They hand it off to someone else, I expect, to be disassembled and placed on to the sprue. The sculptor may be madder than you.

There are putties and resins that solve this, too, it's a golden age for solutions to these problems.

But don't take these quibbles to be disagreement. I don't like paying real prices and not feeling like it was worth it.

I recently re-discovered why you should use super glue gel instead of the liquid super glue. The poor dog thought I was screaming at it!

@Andrew Walters: Then make sprue guy do it. A whole box worth. I agree it's not an insoluble problem, I just hate that it's a problem in the first place. Like, if I hack off the pins to assemble in a different pose, that's on me. But making me have to engineer a joint because you didn't bother….oh, yeah, that other cloud too.

If castings are in metal, the joint may be designed to avoid undercuts which would quickly destroy the mold. If in plastic (polystyrene) why not use a liquid styrene cement that literally melts the two bits together?

I love working with styrenes, for exactly this reason. Liquid styrene cement is a miracle. The ease of cutting, drilling, and shaping styrene is an extra boon, and makes styrene a joy to work with. Unfortunately, there have always been non-styrene plastics used in our hobby (e.g. most 1/72 plastic soldiers), and since 3D printing the variety is growing by leaps and bounds.

It drives me nuts that manufacturers don't plainly state which type of plastic was used. That information alone would save quite a bit of time wasted on experiments. Printed guidance about adhesives, cleaning agents, and cutting/shaping techniques would be even nicer, especially for materials that present problems with the long-standing traditional methods of miniature modeling.

What kind of plastic are GW miniatures made of?

What kind of plastic are GW miniatures made of?

You don't have the need to know. You only need to know that only THEIR adhesive is suitable.

@khanscom: I have some but it takes a long time to set. So that means I have to sit there holding the leg against the body for 5 minutes. Times four per model. Times 30 models. Nope.

@Yellow Admiral: I get the appeal of plastic for those reasons. But how about we let the experts hack things apart and provide ACTUAL JOINTS for us mere mortals?

These are not GW but the plastic is slightly flexible unlike the styrene models of my youth.

Its an interesting subject. I found this as a result of this topic> PLA is a standard FDM printer material I use for my Minis and terrain.

instructables.com › Workshop › 3D Printing
Testing the Best Glue for PLA 3D Printed Parts

Printed guidance about adhesives, cleaning agents, and cutting/shaping techniques would be even nicer,

Raging Heroes does this, yet for me, their assembly has the highest profanity to model assembled ratio. (I keep telling myself that when I splurge on expensive stuff I will not go back to RH, but …)