Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I made some heads with helmets for my imp guard army but they take WAY to long to make each out of greenstuff. How detailed can resin casting get? If the model has teeth with that show up? A thin goggles headband? Which resin casting kit is the best for making many little detailed pieces? Thanks! - grundel

I've cast my own miniatures in resin before, and i believe with a bit of luck you could get that amount of detail or very close to it, you may have to do some cleaning up but it would be better than sculpting each from scratch.

I have personally used this website: http://www.tomps.com/
and ordered some RTV Silicone Rubber for the mould and Polyurethane Fast Cast Resin for the parts.

it took me a bit of practice to get the results I wanted, but i think you should go for it!

Here are some videos from this website; http://www.tapplastics.com/info/video.php

Seems really informative, I would start with them if I were going to begin casting.

Can anyone post some pics of their casting efforts?

Teaser pic of my top secret project...



I sculpted the white one and cast the black ones in the resin I showed mentioned above (the black ones are undercoated, the resin is a pale cream colour)

just a tad taller than a space marine.

The resin cast ones are not perfect, but definitely workable with a bit of tlc

Admech? New Necrons?! WHAT ARE THEY!??!?!!!?!

I Robot!


i knew they would rebel against humans!

ha ha ha, sorry its top secret for now, I've already said too much :p

How detailed can resin casting get?
Be careful of leaving fingerprints in your green stuff - most rtv/resin combinations will pick up that level of detail.

LunaHound wrote:I Robot!


i knew they would rebel against humans!

haha when i saw these i thought the same

RanTheCid wrote:How detailed can resin casting get?
Be careful of leaving fingerprints in your green stuff - most rtv/resin combinations will pick up that level of detail.

Be careful of leaving *any* fingerprints at all! The RTV/resin mix I use (which isn't the best/expensive) is still able to pick up surface textures off the master models. And by surface textures I mean whether your model is glossy or matte.

Resin, done right, is the best level of detail I've seen in miniatures. Look at the stuff Forge World produces, it's orders of magnitude better than anything you'll see in metal or injection molded plastic.

That said, I don't think it's as simple as just throwing together some RTV molds and you win. I've made RTV molds before and while the results can be nice, they're still not up to what FW produces.

Even with minimal experience, though, you should be able to produce stuff that's at least as good as you describe (and as good as injection molded). The only issue is to understand how the molding process works. You need to know where to cut vents in your mold, need to understand "undercut" which basically means you can't mold anything that can't be pulled out of the mold when you're done (you'd probably notice this when you tried to make your mold, and a piece of it tore away with the green).

But forge world does use special molds. They don't have the 2 halves approach. As such, they can get detail and texture on all sides.

Those are techno-magus spacemarine aka. machine cult made marines, I can see one of them has a bolter and what looks to be a power fist.

Amiright or totally off =P

lalabox wrote:But forge world does use special molds. They don't have the 2 halves approach. As such, they can get detail and texture on all sides.

How did you know that? What do they use?

Judging by the mold lines and pour spouts on some of my forgeworld pieces, I'd say that a good number of their bits are done with two piece molds, like most of the rest of the GK world...

The real trick with working with resin is to get the airbubbles out, both out of your mold and out of your resin...

I would assume a vacuum pump is a must to get bubble free resin castings. And I agree that my FW pieces seem to have come from 2 piece molds.

jabbakahut wrote:

lalabox wrote:But forge world does use special molds. They don't have the 2 halves approach. As such, they can get detail and texture on all sides.

How did you know that? What do they use?

Well, looking at heads, backpacks, the engine part on my vulture, and other bits and bobs, they have details (and indents) on all sides. Comparing it with pretty much any plastic piece leads one to deduce that they use much more advanced molds, and if it is in 2 halves, then the halves aren't as rigid, because then they couldn't be pulled apart. Of course, flat vehicle bits wouldn't be like that, but other bits would.

I'm not entirely sure though. This is all based off the power of observation, and a very, very basic knowledge of casting.

forge world uses two part molds, as well as injection molding, with industrial quality.
as for detail, anything, and i mean EVERYTHING will be icked up in a resin cast.

Something I was wondering about recently, as I am not the best sculptor but I recently discovered Blender, an open-source free 3D image maker.

How difficult would it be to build a 3D vehicle or robot let's say in the computer, separate out its bits like a model, send the file off to a rapid-prototyping service to make the master sprue, and then cast resin copies from that master? I'm sure each of those steps need a bit of practice, but it would seem to me there is the capability to have completely fan-based modeling out there. Open-source model kits, if you will.

All i know is that resin is harder to Paint than Plastic ( quote from blue table Painting), and that if you took a Blow Dryer to the Model... Yikes
But i think because it's acrylic Paint it should stop that.

He Who Stood wrote:forge world uses two part molds, as well as injection molding, with industrial quality.
as for detail, anything, and i mean EVERYTHING will be icked up in a resin cast.

Well, then that settles it. Their molds and molding processes are of a higher quality that the normal gw plastics though.

And 'icked'? Is that 'picked' or some other word for 'fethed'?

Technoscream wrote:Teaser pic of my top secret project...



I sculpted the white one and cast the black ones in the resin I showed mentioned above (the black ones are undercoated, the resin is a pale cream colour)

Reminds me of Necrons meet Scud: The Disposable Assasin



Ghidorah

lalabox wrote:

He Who Stood wrote:forge world uses two part molds, as well as injection molding, with industrial quality.
as for detail, anything, and i mean EVERYTHING will be icked up in a resin cast.

Well, then that settles it. Their molds and molding processes are of a higher quality that the normal gw plastics though.

And 'icked'? Is that 'picked' or some other word for 'fethed'?

You're confusing resin casting (FW) and plastic injection molding (GW). Resin casting uses flexible RTV molds, this allows for a small degree of undercut in the mold which ultimately allows for 360 detail. Plastic uses steel molds with zero tolerance for undercuts, the only way to get detail all around the model is it use multi part slide molds like GW used on the BaneBlade.

Well, looking at heads, backpacks, the engine part on my vulture, and other bits and bobs, they have details (and indents) on all sides. Comparing it with pretty much any plastic piece leads one to deduce that they use much more advanced molds, and if it is in 2 halves, then the halves aren't as rigid, because then they couldn't be pulled apart. Of course, flat vehicle bits wouldn't be like that, but other bits would.

Resin casting, as GW does it, and is done thoughout the Garage Kit industry (and pretty much perfected in japan) is done with multi part molds -usually- of a soft silicone rubber of some sort, having detail on -all- sides is why two peice (or more) molds are done in the first place, though it seems that some parts, such as the tank turrets are done with a -one piece mold-, simply slit across the bottom to facilitate removal the rubber being flexable (which it can be as it doesn't need to stand up to the heat of molten metal or the forces of spin casting) is easy pull out of small details... In many ways it's not a -more- advanced method, but a -less- advanced one, the major equipment being needed being a pressure chamber of some sort to reduce the bubbles in the mix..(you want low pressure to suck the airbubbles out of the molds, and high pressure to reduce bubbles in the finsished peices) because the molds are flexable though, they can wear out after several dozen castings, which leads to a high overhead, and therefore costs.

On the whole FW's quality seems about middling for the industry, they have problems with part warp age and serious mold lines through awkward places on their kits, that other producers seem to have avoided..

for more info, I'd sugest looking at http://www.smooth-on.com/

JOHIRA wrote:Something I was wondering about recently, as I am not the best sculptor but I recently discovered Blender, an open-source free 3D image maker.

How difficult would it be to build a 3D vehicle or robot let's say in the computer, separate out its bits like a model, send the file off to a rapid-prototyping service to make the master sprue, and then cast resin copies from that master? I'm sure each of those steps need a bit of practice, but it would seem to me there is the capability to have completely fan-based modeling out there. Open-source model kits, if you will.

No, way too expensive. Better off spending a couple hundred on misc kits and bash together what you want.

jabbakahut wrote:

JOHIRA wrote:Something I was wondering about recently, as I am not the best sculptor but I recently discovered Blender, an open-source free 3D image maker.

How difficult would it be to build a 3D vehicle or robot let's say in the computer, separate out its bits like a model, send the file off to a rapid-prototyping service to make the master sprue, and then cast resin copies from that master? I'm sure each of those steps need a bit of practice, but it would seem to me there is the capability to have completely fan-based modeling out there. Open-source model kits, if you will.

No, way too expensive. Better off spending a couple hundred on misc kits and bash together what you want.

Never the less, can and has been done, and laser cutting is getting affordable too if you've got the skills to plan things out..
http://www.3d-miniatures.com/tiki-page.php?pageName=Landing%20Page

The website you provided doesn't seem to provide the services we were talking about, in fact I don't understand what point you were illustrating with that website.

jabbakahut wrote:The website you provided doesn't seem to provide the services we were talking about, in fact I don't understand what point you were illustrating with that website.

I think it's pretty clear..

At 3d-miniatures.com, we're applying modern technology to an old hobby. As 3D printing continues to get cheaper, and the software technology gets better, we're using it to design and produce miniature figures.

One of the guys who does their "sculpting" pointed me at the site (known him for 4-5 years now, mostly online met once or twice at gencon) , if you look at the stuff under "thrade" thats his work, all designed digitally using zbrush, then 3d printed for prototypes, another artist I met at gencon 2 years ago (pro btw, doing licenced work for lucas) had been working on cleaning up his Chiss Clawcraft digital model, for 3d printing to prototype for a resin kit.

I think it's pretty obvious that they're not at a point that they'd turn out joe shmuck's pan-fo, on request, but there's a link on the sidebar, to the right there, if you're a modeler..

http://www.3d-miniatures.com/webpage-Designers

Digtal -> Model stuff -is- being done by hobbyist level folks, it's not just the big boys..

Very informative thread! Thank you everybody for contributing.

So if I am casting 150 torsos and heads for my IG army which material am I going to want to use for the mold?