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Of the three replacements I received, the only one that was supposedly 'inspected' by CS for quality was the worst of them. Bits of mold stuck all over the place and resin 'spooge' that had seeped between the mold halves and obliterated detail completely.

After receiving my 3rd replacement, I have managed to put together one set of parts that are within my skills to repair and build. That may sound a bit like a cop-out, but I really wanted to build this figure while my eyesight is good enough to see it... :-) if I wait for GW to get it right... Well you do the math.

I have sent an email to CS with a snail mail copy to follow requesting clarification on QC for Finecast, and what GW management actually deem to be fit for sale. I have photos of the relevant flaws in all the figures I received which I will be enclosing.

I've also spelled out in simple terms that I will NOT under any circumstances purchase another Finecast model unless I am guaranteed of getting the same (or better) quality that I have come to expect from their metal and plastic figures.

I have yet to receive a response...

How about a picture of that little gem when you finish it?

Is this finecast standard now, or temperary insanity?

Grot 6 wrote:How about a picture of that little gem when you finish it?

Is this finecast standard now, or temperary insanity?

I would be willing to bet that GW is unlikely to go back to metal for a variety of reasons, many of which are basically that someone would have to admit they were wrong about any or all of various topics like: the company's ability to cast in Finecast, the QA process, the speed at which casters can retrain, the costs and profits from the conversion, etc.

I could still see this, long-term, as an interim step to going all-plastic. Finecast could be a stop-gap as they work to get more molds made quicker for plastics. Plastics generally seem to require completely new sculpts, whereas finecast can have molds made from the same masters used for metals.

Got my 3rd replacement for my Warhammer 40k anniversary marine. As soon as I saw the box I knew it was a miscast, I wasn’t mistaken. (Perhaps I should be a fortune teller? Or is it how predictable finecast is?) Anyway phoned up ad they guy said he would give me the boxes and bases which I had not received so far and said I could have a poster as well for my troubles. I also sent this email;

Dear Games Workshop Customer Services,

Today on the 5th of April I received my second replacement for the Warhammer 40,000 figure and this has also been a miss cast. The problems with this are;

Firstly there is a hole in the rock again with a very thin layer of resin covering it meaning that there are transparent areas.

Secondly, the Orks and Space Marine heads have air bubbles in.

Thirdly there are many air bubbles on the Space Marines body itself for instance on the

Powerfist and feet. These are all very visible and would detect from the overall finish.

The banner has lots of flash on the top which obscures the rivets behind the Imperial Aquila meaning a loss to detail.

Finally I have yet to receive a box for my previous models or bases.

I have already spoken to one of your colleges about this today, which I believe is the assistant manager and he told me that he will organise the extra boxes, bases as well as a poster for my troubles. I feel rather disappointed with quality control and communications with sending and receiving emails, which has meant it has taken two months to receive two faulty replacements. The assistant manager has also said that I should receive these before the end of the week.

I hope you appreciate my disappointment and would like to be compensated accordingly (Pictures are attaches bellow),

Yours sincerely,

HAZZER.

EDIT: forgot to add pics

I agree, they're in far too deep to go back now. Finecast very well may be an intermediate before going to all plastic, but I doubt it simply because of the cost of molds for plastic. They're not going to invest millions of dollars into molds for models that only sells a few thousand units a year.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ HAZZER - I'm not trying to be rude, but nothing can be seen in that picture.

No affence taken. I'll put up a better pic tommrow.

They should merge a thread in the rumors section to this one, he bought new Termies from FW and they resemble somewhat,,,,,,,FC!

Ahh, finecast. My Zoanthropes & Hiveguard abounded with bubbles and odd spindles where spindles ought not be.

Winterkit wrote:Ahh, finecast. My Zoanthropes & Hiveguard abounded with bubbles and odd spindles where spindles ought not be.

I hate when that happens!

I'm in shock - I think I may have gotten a good cast of Arjac Rockfist.

There's a lot of flash present, and a couple of mold lines, but I've only spotted one very small bubble on the edge of his heel - which will be hidden by basing material.

I'll get some pics up on Monday/Tuesday, and the experts can see if I've missed anything - I'll also take a further look using my 3x magnifiers, and see if anything else stands out.

Having said that, the one in the case at Warhammer World on Sunday having a drooping hammer amused me - really shouldn't've put him so close to the lights in the case...

Dysartes wrote:I'm in shock - I think I may have gotten a good cast of Arjac Rockfist.

There's a lot of flash present, and a couple of mold lines, but I've only spotted one very small bubble on the edge of his heel - which will be hidden by basing material.

I'll get some pics up on Monday/Tuesday, and the experts can see if I've missed anything - I'll also take a further look using my 3x magnifiers, and see if anything else stands out.

Having said that, the one in the case at Warhammer World on Sunday having a drooping hammer amused me - really shouldn't've put him so close to the lights in the case...

Yes! Please show us a decent FC model it will be educational. Still compared to so many failures of FC so far in this thread it will be good, please make sure to have clear and crisp pics if you can.

Grot 6 wrote:How about a picture of that little gem when you finish it?

Is this finecast standard now, or temperary insanity?

I've posted a pic to my gallery. My work is pretty ordinary compared to the calibre of modellers here.

As for the standard of Finecast, this was my first and last Finecast purchase. It's just not worth the grief.

winterdyne wrote:Forgeworld (as it is now) always was, and remains, a division of Games Workshop. For a while, Forgeworld was used as a brand by Armorcast in the US for their range of GW-licensed designs, before production rights were revoked and transferred to the Forgeworld division of GW in the UK.

Some correction needed here.
Armorcast never used the term Forge World/Forgeworld. Forge World Models was a US company in direct competition with Armorcast that held a one year license to produce 40K licensed resin vehicle models at the same time Armorcast held its it initial one year license to do the same. GW preferred Armorcast's model quality and sales numbers for the first year of license so awarded Armorcast a open ended, renewable, two year 40K resin vehicle license. Forge World Models was then out of the 40K resin vehicle business (along with Epicast) and went on to produce some WarZone vehicles and some fantasy terrain before folding.

In the three years of the 40K vehicle licenses, Armorcast produced just over 30,000 resin 40K vehicles for sales in the USA only, more than enough for GW to realize that there was actually a large market for 40K scale versions of the Epic models. This led directly to the non-renewal of the Armorcast license followed shortly thereafter by by the start up of the GW version of Forge World.

Tim DuPertuis
Armorcast owner from 1995 - 2007 (when it was sold to other parties)

PS. I still can't believe GW is trying to do highly detailed, complex figures in resin...

I stand corrected. :-)

Speaking of FW, I washed up that Carmine Dragon I've been vaunting. Still no bubbles, but I seem to have 2 right claws (both perfectly cast, lol)... Guess it's not too good to be true after all. Bad packing monkey, bad!

Positive Finecast report: Eldar Avatar came in perfect shape. Much better then the miserable Lord of Change I got several weeks back

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:I just got off phone with GW customer service. I have to mail via a Fed Ex return slip, a TWC Lord wolf head, x2 cyberwolf heads, and 79 sprues of five SM backpacks back to them. In return I'm getting heads for cyberwolves, head for TWC Lord wolf, a 4th replacement on Harlie torso, and 79 backpack sprues.

At this point, I cannot with any degree of confidence, purchase Finecast til I see marked improvement.

Well I received my 79 sprues of backpacks, they sent 82. My thunderwolf lord is miserable, big air pocket on back and big gaps on rear left leg when it fits to body. Cyberwolves have ears and don't have airpockets on fur below ears on back of head because these have airpockets on their damned ears now. Didn't receive a Harlie torso. So my adventure continues...

Seems to me the way forward if you want stuff for 40k is to buy from Kromlech, Maxmini.eu, Chapterhouse and the many other parts suppliers and then only use GW plastics.

@ Frozenwastes....+1
i totally agree. I was at my FLGS yesterday and i checked out a bunch of sicarius models he had haning around. All 4 had visible bubbles. Failcost will never claim a single dollar from me.

shasolenzabi wrote:

Dysartes wrote:I'm in shock - I think I may have gotten a good cast of Arjac Rockfist.

There's a lot of flash present, and a couple of mold lines, but I've only spotted one very small bubble on the edge of his heel - which will be hidden by basing material.

I'll get some pics up on Monday/Tuesday, and the experts can see if I've missed anything - I'll also take a further look using my 3x magnifiers, and see if anything else stands out.

Having said that, the one in the case at Warhammer World on Sunday having a drooping hammer amused me - really shouldn't've put him so close to the lights in the case...

Yes! Please show us a decent FC model it will be educational. Still compared to so many failures of FC so far in this thread it will be good, please make sure to have clear and crisp pics if you can.

I'll do my best.

I picked up a pack of tyranid bonesword/lash whips and a pack of boneswords the other day. The lash whip kits were cast perfectly, but the material was a bit rubbery. The boneswords pack was a lot more rigid, almost brittle, the way most resin-cast stuff I've seen ends up.

Any one ever see this?

Yes Finecast in general has bad problems with that. My Eldar rangers came with their rifle barrels basically bent to the right, any attempt to straighten them out had them shatter.

Thus 2 of my Rangers look like something out of Looney Tunes, when Bugs Bunny bends the gun barrels.

I had some terrible finecast replaced and the replacements seem ok except for a few bent parts. I wont bother complaining again because its not worth the effort anymore, and even though I am very happy with GWs customer service and replacement policy, I simply will no longer buy a GW product that isnt plastic because their plastics are still awesome.

Bought the new finecast warpriest and Witch hunter a couple of days ago to use as conversions for Inquisitional Henchmen.

The underside of the priest's cloak was horrendous. Thankfully, you can't actually see it once based. Additionally, his face was horrendous, but I was cutting the head off to use for conversions anyway. Other than that, aside from some insane mold lines, it was okay.

The Witch hunter was a lot of work, but came out more respectably. Lots of flash. Lots of it. In places that don't make sense. Some bubbles, but not incredibly offending and easily removed. Also, the backside of his hat was paper thin and ended up flaking off. Thankfully, it didn't get to the point where it would look awkward, and I was able to cut most of the offending parts off without making him look broken. Although if you look from the right angle, you can tell where portions of the rim of the hat were hollow (and if you hold it up to the light, you can see portions where it's still paper thin). I'm still scared that some parts of him will fall apart in the future just because of how badly cast he was, but for now he looks fine.

There was another war priest in the FLGS, and boy... did he have issues. Part of the pink mold was still on him, in addition to a tonne of flash.

Really, the only thing that saved these two models was the fact that I would end up doing a lot of cutting up myself anyway. If someone wanted to use them as-is, they would have been garbage.

I had my first bad experience with FC recently; one of my Flamers of Tzeentch must have been placed in a mis-aligned mold as there was a 3mm wide mould line running all the way along the main body which completely obliterated all the fine detail. Oddly enough, the other 2 (and the arms for the third) were faultless!

Rather than complain to CS (as I probably should have done) I decided to salvage what I could and build a Daemon prince out of various bitz I had lying around

J.Black wrote:I had my first bad experience with FC recently; one of my Flamers of Tzeentch must have been placed in a mis-aligned mold as there was a 3mm wide mould line running all the way along the main body which completely obliterated all the fine detail. Oddly enough, the other 2 (and the arms for the third) were faultless!

3mm is the thickness of a base. That would be some mould line...

It's pretty horrific; like someone cut the model in half then stuck them together with a big wodge of resin :S.... Maybe the mold came undone at some point during the casting process XD

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:I picked up a pack of tyranid bonesword/lash whips and a pack of boneswords the other day. The lash whip kits were cast perfectly, but the material was a bit rubbery. The boneswords pack was a lot more rigid, almost brittle, the way most resin-cast stuff I've seen ends up.

Any one ever see this?

Yes, my Necron Lord staff

oni wrote:I agree, they're in far too deep to go back now. Finecast very well may be an intermediate before going to all plastic, but I doubt it simply because of the cost of molds for plastic. They're not going to invest millions of dollars into molds for models that only sells a few thousand units a year..

Interesting, because have you looked at their Share Price in the last 12 months?



Not a company thats struggling for investment or Cash, it also paid a Dividend last year. You are aware of the current Global Recession? This Company would not struggle for Cash from Investors or banks, so actually it could happen and if they put several Models in each steel (read 9- 10 ) mould they could reduce overheads significantly.

Leave the business for those with MBA's.

Although it's interesting that several posters on here, who have experience of resin casting and the processes involved, have made statements that GW are taking short-cuts on the resin casting process with their FC. Both in the quality of resin used, and then not using the correct pressure-pot equipment.

One would have thought that now, after more than a year and with the above financial data in mind, they would have put some money into it? Or more likely, the vast majority of customers are not returning the goods (either because they have no comparisons to draw upon, either with previous metals or other company's resin, or they simply don't know any different) and the individual's pride in their own work at GW (those making the models) has been subsumed by the larger company which is only interested in the bottom line.

Pacific wrote:Although it's interesting that several posters on here, who have experience of resin casting and the processes involved, have made statements that GW are taking short-cuts on the resin casting process with their FC. Both in the quality of resin used, and then not using the correct pressure-pot equipment.

One would have thought that now, after more than a year and with the above financial data in mind, they would have put some money into it? Or more likely, the vast majority of customers are not returning the goods (either because they have no comparisons to draw upon, either with previous metals or other company's resin, or they simply don't know any different) and the individual's pride in their own work at GW (those making the models) has been subsumed by the larger company which is only interested in the bottom line.

Agreed, not sure what their plans are, but rest assured they have a plan and several backups, whether that is better or worse for the hobby idk, but Tom Kirby will retire soon and I'm pretty sure he will ensure that his Share Portfolio is very healthy before retiring.

Oh and here is what the Chairman Bought last month.

Games Workshop Tom Kirby (ch) 23 Mar 12 185,000 (no of Share) £534.57(price of share) £988,955(Total price paid)

He now holds about 6.7% of the Company.