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Hello I'm wondering why GW can't make titans?
I heard that other companies like FW make titans and they are in the same department or something.
So why can't GW sell the titans? To my point of view it's simply not fair!
GW sell BaneBlades but why not titans?
I don't really go to local stores cuz its too far away but I do visit their website.
Well I was just wondering!

Because by GW's own admission , the miniatures they have are not 100% model . They are made with gaming pieces in mind.

FW on another hand is pure model.

I dont know what exactly GW means but , i take it as
their sculptors sucks at sculpting.

That's and lame excuse

Simple answer is they'd need to be too big, which means they'd require many frames/sprues, which means they would cost a fortune, which means they would not sell enough to be profitable.

Plastic injection molding is on the order of $100,000 per frame die (the steel mold the plastic is stuck in). The Reaver would consist of many of these (the baneblade is IIRC 10 different frames, and the reaver is 3 or so times as big). So produciton costs (before anything which is saleable is made) would be prohibitive.

Resin casting, as forgeworld and armourcast, is much less expensive on the production side so they can make small runs profitable. Clearly they realized they were selling enough superheavy tanks to make a go at the baneblade, I bet they're not selling enough of the Titans for the math to work out...yet.

Jack

Jackmojo wrote:
Plastic injection molding is on the order of $100,000 per frame die
Jack

And thats why GW is starting to do buisness with china , because im sure it doesnt even cost 1/5th of ^ price

GW should produce a new Epic Adeptus Titanicus game, using their modern plastics technology and DP9's Silhouette engine to drive Titan on Titan (and Gargant) combat.

Maybe that'll be the next Mystery Box.

And they will probably make a plastic Warhound. It's a big enough seller for FW to warrant them doing one in plastic.

daesung wrote:Hello I'm wondering why GW can't make titans?
I heard that other companies like FW make titans and they are in the same department or something.
So why can't GW sell the titans? To my point of view it's simply not fair!
GW sell BaneBlades but why not titans?
I don't really go to local stores cuz its too far away but I do visit their website.
Well I was just wondering!

LunaHound wrote:
And thats why GW is starting to do buisness with china , because im sure it doesnt even cost 1/5th of ^ price

We can only hope we don't see more things on the quality level of the blastscapes then...

Nurglitch wrote:GW should produce a new Epic Adeptus Titanicus game, using their modern plastics technology and DP9's Silhouette engine to drive Titan on Titan (and Gargant) combat.

That would be awesome, but then I pray for a proper rebirth for Epic in general

H.B.M.C. wrote:
And they will probably make a plastic Warhound. It's a big enough seller for FW to warrant them doing one in plastic.

Could be, I only hope it wouldn't end up to scrawny compared to the older ones. Its a shame Knights have never been very big in the fluff, they'd be the perfect foil to the Stompas.

Jack

Jackmojo wrote:

LunaHound wrote:
And thats why GW is starting to do buisness with china , because im sure it doesnt even cost 1/5th of ^ price

We can only hope we don;t see more things on the quality level of the blastscapes then...

Im pretty sure , that was from GW getting greedy and let the quality drop from a cheaper deal.
Factories that are capable of manufacturing these simple plastics are everywhere , and they would
try to screw over a potential customer that has been around for 3 decades for a batch of blastcape?

No one is dumb enough to do buisness like that.

Jackmojo wrote:Simple answer is they'd need to be too big, which means they'd require many frames/sprues, which means they would cost a fortune, which means they would not sell enough to be profitable.

Plastic injection molding is on the order of $100,000 per frame die (the steel mold the plastic is stuck in). The Reaver would consist of many of these (the baneblade is IIRC 10 different frames, and the reaver is 3 or so times as big). So produciton costs (before anything which is saleable is made) would be prohibitive.

Resin casting, as forgeworld and armourcast, is much less expensive on the production side so they can make small runs profitable. Clearly they realized they were selling enough superheavy tanks to make a go at the baneblade, I bet they're not selling enough of the Titans for the math to work out...yet.

Jack

I used to work in an industry that used a lot of different Injection Molding dies, and that price is a bit on the high side.

By a lot.

Still, there is certainly a lot of cost involved, so there is that to consider.

The initial outlay of capital would be a lot more than FW's costs, especially as they've now been partially outsourced to China.

I do believe that we'll see plastic Warhound sooner rather than later though.

Apocalypse made GW too much money for them to NOT do it!

I'm no expert, but I've heard that number in a few places before (perhaps it includes design and R&D and such for GW?) what sort of costs are you familiar with?

Jack

Plastic injection molds with retractable pins (golf balls baby!) were running around $60 to $70K.

And, much like we were, I'm sure GW has a "relationship" with some toolmaker to help keep costs down with repeat business and all that.

I'm not saying $100K isn't possible.

You can pay whatever you want, or what a vendor will charge you!

Well its nice to know I wasn't off by an order of magnitude

Thanks for the data though.

Jack

Hey, for all we know, you might be right!

I'm just sayin'...

Still, it might explain some of the prices...!

Well I guess the prices will be a little to high. But I think a lot of people will buy it or they can make you know a walker version?

Molds are expensive. They have to be sure people will buy a ton if they make a huge kit. They are testing the waters with baneblades and such, I'm sure eventually there will be a plastic titan.

I would definitely buy a titan if they werent so ridiculously overpriced, so if GW made one that was a good bit less I think they would sell very well. I also think that the new landing pad and bastions are a little proof that they aren't too worried about steel die costs. How many people do you know are going to buy a landing pad for that much when they could make one out of cardboard for $10 and make it however they liked? I think they might not want to make a titan right now because of the economy and the fact that forgeworld already has some really nice models out right now for the people that must have one.

As others have said, I think we'll see a titan from GW eventually, but it isn't something that's on the fast track.

LunaHound wrote:

Jackmojo wrote:
Plastic injection molding is on the order of $100,000 per frame die
Jack

And thats why GW is starting to do buisness with china , because im sure it doesnt even cost 1/5th of ^ price

Chinese molds suck... unless you're willing to fly someone out there to sit on the toolmaker until it's done right. By the time you're done with all that, the price difference isn't that great anymore. Companies making lots of disposable crap or products with very short market life cycles can still save money by farming out mold making offshore, but companies like GW who intend to use their tools for a long time before replacing them are better off sticking to Western mold makers. A lot of the high-end tooling business has been returning to the States for precisely this reason. The actual molding may still be done offshore, but toolmaking is making a comeback.

As for the cost of an injection mold, it varies a lot depending on how complex the parts are, how the mold is being made and how good you need the mold cavities to look. You could get a mold with slides for $60k, but it would have to be for a pretty simple shape (likely some internal part of a device, and not something that consumers actually get a look at--I've worked on molds like this for the medical industry). GW's molds don't need slides (none of the sprues I've seen do at least), but the complexity of their parts and the fact they all have to fit together pushes up the price a little. I would guess that their sprues cost $75-100k to tool, but it's been some years since I've worked directly with mold makers or molders so I might be off a little.

As for the original question, GW makes titans. Forgeworld is not an entirely independent entity. Read the FAQ. FW is owned by GW. Titans will never be plastic because they would be ridiculously expensive to make (and therefore buy). They would have to sell a Titan kit to every single 40k player on Earth at the current prices to pay off the tooling. They'll never sell that many titans so they'll never make a profit with plastic titans. Resin isn't cheap but it can be done in small scale production and still be sold for a profit. Which is why Foregworld exists, to make short-run high-end items available to those people who really want them. Kits like the titan (and the other low-demand, but still cool items like dreadnaught parts and really big tanks) are the reason for FW's existence.

I would think that the only reason the baneblade made it to plastic was that they figured out how to build it with minimal sprues and Apocalypse took off so well that they determined there was really a market for them (and the stompa is just a much simpler model to build than a titan... nowhere near as many pieces or structural demands). Titans are more iffy because they're so large and so not box-shaped. Who even has a place to store a titan? The nature of the product just greatly limits the consumer demand much more than a baneblade does.

And as for the blastscape craters, those appear to be thermoformed (vacuum formed) rather than molded, which would explain the crappy surface detail.

If GW had the technological advancement to make a titan we would all be speaking british.

MEP wrote:
Chinese molds suck... unless you're willing to fly someone out there to sit on the toolmaker until it's done right.

And as for the blastscape craters, those appear to be thermoformed (vacuum formed) rather than molded, which would explain the crappy surface detail.

K 2 replies to those 2 points ^

First , you or people around you havnt dealt with chinese companies much right? Let me explain this.
I used to think alot like you , stereotyping all the bad products are made in china. This is more true then its false.
But lets see why. China is experiencing economic sprout , EVERYONE that have the money is trying to invest in something , even if they dont know
wth they are doing. Sadly this is how it is , people have the money , and invest in something they think will work , and let people they "trust" to figure the rest out.

In other words , im trying to say. You are simply claiming that people that offer "pro painted minis" and they are all badly painted , and all came from china.
And base on that you go on saying china have 0 painters that can paint at professional lvl .
But thats all it is , you are all suckered into the "cheapest alternative". So dont take the offer in china thats like 80% off , dont be so greedy, take the ones thats 50% off
compared to n.a / eu and you still get the same quality product for half the price.

2nd point , yes they are said to be vac formed , and again people blame on china. So are you claiming that GW didnt know it was vac formed?
why would china be responsible for an inferior product when GW is the one that chose to produce it via inferior method?

Yes there are lots of chinese companies thats awful , but that doesnt mean the right ones doesnt exist.
But yes , your reasons are very persuasive if you want people to invest in N.A companies again. I dont blame you at all.

Lastly , just want you to know , i dont support china and 95% of their buisness ethics either. Infact it sickens me.
However , i think if you want to dislike something , atleast dislike it for the right reasons.

OMG GUI'S! LEIK GW MAKES NO TITANS (LUL TITS) BUT FW DOES! WTF IS UP WITH THAT! LEIK FW IS A DIFFERENT COMPANY SO Y CANT GW DO THE SAEM!

Yet again my point is proven, this guy adds NOTHING to dakka other than annoying, short and pointless threads.

corpsesarefun wrote:

OMG GUI'S! LEIK GW MAKES NO TITANS (LUL TITS) BUT FW DOES! WTF IS UP WITH THAT! LEIK FW IS A DIFFERENT COMPANY SO Y CANT GW DO THE SAEM!

Yet again my point is proven, this guy adds NOTHING to dakka other than annoying, short and pointless threads.

Why so angry? I don't see how this thread was pointless or annoying.

corpsesarefun wrote:

OMG GUI'S! LEIK GW MAKES NO TITANS (LUL TITS) BUT FW DOES! WTF IS UP WITH THAT! LEIK FW IS A DIFFERENT COMPANY SO Y CANT GW DO THE SAEM!

Yet again my point is proven, this guy adds NOTHING to dakka other than annoying, short and pointless threads.

Tampons and midol aren't expensive. Try them.

-OR-

Just try not freaking out on someone asking a newbie question. You were a newbie once, and didn't know what forge world was or what they did, try to pretend you remember what that is like.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LunaHound wrote:

First , you or people around you havnt dealt with chinese companies much right? Let me explain this.
I used to think alot like you , stereotyping all the bad products are made in china. This is more true then its false.
But lets see why. China is experiencing economic sprout , EVERYONE that have the money is trying to invest in something , even if they dont know
wth they are doing. Sadly this is how it is , people have the money , and invest in something they think will work , and let people they "trust" to figure the rest out.

It doesn't really matter why. They are making tons of poorly made and even deadly products (google lead toys and poisoned dogfood if you don't know what I'm talking about) and we don't want to see the quality of GW's products go down any further. We also don't want to see any more jobs go to the Chinese when our job market is already suffering. MEP is being pretty insensitive and generalizing a lot of things, but those facts I mentioned are true and it doesnt really matter why they are happening, it doesnt make them ok.

LunaHound wrote:
In other words , im trying to say. You are simply claiming that people that offer "pro painted minis" and they are all badly painted , and all came from china.
And base on that you go on saying china have 0 painters that can paint at professional lvl .
But thats all it is , you are all suckered into the "cheapest alternative". So dont take the offer in china thats like 80% off , dont be so greedy, take the ones thats 50% off
compared to n.a / eu and you still get the same quality product for half the price.

I don't really see MEP making any point like this (ie saying that all poor quality work is from china). He even said that the Chinese people have the skill, they just aren't paid to do it at a high quality level. He did say the mold-makers are better in America, but I think that is at least partially true due to China's factories and die makers being constantly paid to make lower quality products(so not exactly their fault). At the end of this paragraph you kinda go into his negative mentality and make some sweeping generalizations of your own which is not a good way to respond to someone you are mad at for making generalizations about a country.

LunaHound wrote:
Lastly , just want you to know , i dont support china and 95% of their buisness ethics either. Infact it sickens me.
However , i think if you want to dislike something , atleast dislike it for the right reasons.

I don't think MEP is trying to get people to invest in American companies, and I don't think anyone reading it is using his comment as a basis for investment anyway. He is just trying to show his dislike for GW paying less for a lower quality product that takes jobs away from people in our country and then GW sells that product back to us for just as much, if not more money.

RustyKnight wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:

OMG GUI'S! LEIK GW MAKES NO TITANS (LUL TITS) BUT FW DOES! WTF IS UP WITH THAT! LEIK FW IS A DIFFERENT COMPANY SO Y CANT GW DO THE SAEM!

Yet again my point is proven, this guy adds NOTHING to dakka other than annoying, short and pointless threads.

Why so angry? I don't see how this thread was pointless or annoying.

Go on the OP's profile and look up all his other threads, when you have done that come back to me and try to tell me i shouldnt be annoyed with this guy repeatedly making short and pointless threads.

Full paragraphs with propper grammar and full sentances are basics, as are actually researching things before just going straight to dakka to ask about everything.

Dont worry there is alot of money to be made so GW will bring titans here soon....

daesung wrote:Well I guess the prices will be a little to high. But I think a lot of people will buy it or they can make you know a walker version?

What would a walker version be? You mean like the Epic titan models which you can already buy on the GW web page.

Anyways, we don't get plastic titans because it's currently not feasible to produce them profitably with current technology. You don't want to make a model that you're going to lose money on. Titans are big models, with large, curved surface areas, which on their own make the casting process more fiddicult. It's going to take a lot of sprues to do. so the initial costs of production are going to be pretty high. So you need to sell X number of models to get yourself out the red, and then at least you'll start making a profit on it. With something like a titan, X is going to be a very high number, with the drawback that it's also going to be very expensive, and something that very few people are going to have multiples of.

That's the design reason so many vehicles have a common base, like the Rhino variations. Two sprues give you the basic vehicle, and then with about one additional sprue you have a whirlwind, vindicator, razorback, predator. One set of molds give you the basis for at least five model popular kits, so you're guaranteeing yourself a high sales volume with which to recoup costs.

Another reason they won't switch to plastic: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They are comfortable that the current demand for titans is being met by FW's supply. That's the superiority of resin for low production run models. Molds are cheaper, detail is higher, and they can justify it as a premium product so the price vs production cost ratio is much better for them. So remaking it in plastic is involves massive costs, with very little to no gain.

Ain't the Stompa considered a Titan-eque thing? Big, Lots of parts, walker..

I know in Epic it was just a speed bump, but in the 40k game doesn't it be able to go toe-to-toe with Warhounds?

You just need to wait, and more, non-Stompa Titans will appear.

Hollismason wrote:If GW had the technological advancement to make a titan we would all be speaking british.

Word, yo.