Sean_OBrien wrote:GW spends a very small amount (relative to everything else they spend) on tooling each year - including all the design and what not that leads up to the finished molds.
As mentioned, since everything is done in house - they pay relatively small premiums to actually create a mold (ignoring for a second the labor of the operators). It is hard to do specific calculations on what it would take for a mold to be profitable - but based off from
GW's price structure, it is significantly lower than it would be for...pretty much anyone else.
The cost of the mold blank itself is pretty low - few hundred to a thousand dollars. Machine time adds up a bit, that is where you often get hammered with using services. Cutting a simple cavity is pretty quick and cheap (brackets and other bits that do not require a lot of polish).
Miniature molds tend to need a pretty smooth surface, so companies who are running mills for producing molds will have a higher machine time as they work there way down to the final finish (and probably do the final finish by hand). If they are using EDM to produce the tooling - they will have the cost of the more expensive (both to purchase and to run) machines as well as a multi step process to get to your final mold. It ends up being less labor intensive and more toy expensive though. Once you have the toys though - they only make money when they run.
When all is said and done though - even with the labor - each mold probably "costs"
GW in the $4-6K range. Pretty low bar for recouping costs.
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aka_mythos wrote:
Breotan wrote:There is also the material the mold is made from. For high print run sprues, you need a sturdier metal than for limited run sprues. This allows
GW to cut costs a bit on the low run kits.
Just to add to what you're saying. There are a good variety of alloys that can be used for the mold. The cheapest molds can be made of aluminum and can be good for up to no more than 10,000 parts if the parts removal isn't rough. With the generally soft plastic
GW uses and their part complexity you might get 3000-4000 from the cheapest molds. These types of molds are usually used for prototype runs, to temporarily ramp up production, or as stop gaps while steel molds which take longer are finished.
Not sure where that data is coming from - but you can get a few thousand shots out of an epoxy mold. Descent quality aluminum molds will last for tens of thousands - while the higher end alloys get into the hundreds of thousands of shots. Steel tooling has its place, but it isn't really needed for hobby products - even for
GW.
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As an added note here - I have seen several EDM rams go through the local industrial auctions. Some of them get picked up by jewelry store type places (they use them for creating the dies for signet rings and collectible coins). One of the companies I use to get photoetched parts from has also gotten into the wire EDM business, and the prices for short runs on the EDM have gotten competitive with short run electrochemical machining.
I have often said that
GW makes back cost plus profit on distribution, not sales. Any profit from sales is so much gravy for them.
HIPS is so cheap at scale it is no wonder that Perry, Warlord, Victrix, WGF, and anyone else pushing plastic are nibbling away at
GW's "wall and moat". These other producers have more overhead than
GW and offer more value in their kit because once they sell their kits to a distributor they've made their costs back as well as profit enough to start the next project.
GW really should be utilizing their in-house/sunken cost production to sell at a more attractive price with greater value in order to maintain their market dominance.. From any sane business standpoint that would be a most appealing goal, I would think y'know market dominance.
Good thing they're not though.
