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From TGN: Wayland Games have announced that they are not going to be selling the current Citadel Finecast range due to excessive errors in the product range.


From their website: http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/games-workshop/finecast-resin-models/cat_955.html

We regret that we are not presently retailing the Citadel Finecast range.

Unfortunately, a randomly sampled assessment revealed what we feel to be an excessive level of actual and potential flaws that, if reflected across our entire stock of Finecast, could have resulted in unacceptable inconvenience to our customers. Although we will be returning our present stockholding to the manufacturer, please be assured that we remain committed to carrying the Finecast line and will be restocking in due course.

For your information, we sampled and then assessed 60 sealed blisters with 30 taken at random from each of two deliveries of stock. Failures were 17 (57%) of 30 and 16 (53%) of 30, making 33 (55%) of 60 in total. While failure doesn’t necessarily denote the blister content as being of less than merchantable quality, for our purposes it does categorise it as having a visible flaw that might be of sufficient concern to a customer such that the item might be returned. Details and images were provided to the manufacturer, with redacted copies of the images appearing below.

Please note, the blisters remain sealed and so images were taken through the product packaging.

Nice.

Kudos to Wayland for setting standards.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1770/369106.page

About half way down the page, there's already some discussion of this if you're interested.

yes thanks, I'd like to see their images too and what the flaws were. That was consistent with my experiment at a much smaller set size.

Interesting.

I don't believe anyone should accept significant defects in Finecast. GW will only improve the process if it makes economic sense, in that they are receiving too many returns.

niceguyteddy wrote:I don't believe anyone should accept significant defects in Finecast. GW will only improve the process if it makes economic sense, in that they are receiving too many returns.

Point out the "defects in Finecast" there for me.

Oh wait. There's none. It's hairs stuck inside the clamshell packaging.

While it's grody and kinda weird, it's not exactly "a defect in Finecast".

Looks more to me like Wayland's implementing their own version of "Quality Control" and deciding anything is a flaw.

nice, but I'm sure GW will just take those returns and ship them out to someone else who won't return them :( Hopefully if they get enough returns they'll step up their game and invest in some quality control.

Been thinking about getting a finecast hive tyrant but I've been really hesitant.. I know I can return it if it's bad, but I just don't wanna go through the hassle...

Augustus wrote:yes thanks, I'd like to see their images too and what the flaws were. That was consistent with my experiment at a much smaller set size.

Interesting.

http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/games-workshop/finecast-resin-models/cat_955.html

There are a lot of images so apologies to those at work if you cannot access the Wayland page

Edit: Also apologies for repeating the linky, am barely awake at the moment

by way of compensation a couple of examples:

Kanluwen wrote:Oh wait. There's none. It's hairs stuck inside the clamshell packaging.

While it's grody and kinda weird, it's not exactly "a defect in Finecast".

Looks more to me like Wayland's implementing their own version of "Quality Control" and deciding anything is a flaw.

Sorry, but I'm not interested in buying someone's pubes. I got enough of my own to worry about.

Necros wrote:nice, but I'm sure GW will just take those returns and ship them out to someone else who won't return them :( Hopefully if they get enough returns they'll step up their game and invest in some quality control.

Been thinking about getting a finecast hive tyrant but I've been really hesitant.. I know I can return it if it's bad, but I just don't wanna go through the hassle...

That's been my main put-off. I was curious to check out the new resin, but didn't want to go through all the hassle of returning it. This pretty much puts me off buying anything Finecast in the near future. Or ever, unless they pull their socks up on this one.

Kanluwen wrote:

niceguyteddy wrote:I don't believe anyone should accept significant defects in Finecast. GW will only improve the process if it makes economic sense, in that they are receiving too many returns.

Point out the "defects in Finecast" there for me.

Oh wait. There's none. It's hairs stuck inside the clamshell packaging.

While it's grody and kinda weird, it's not exactly "a defect in Finecast".

Looks more to me like Wayland's implementing their own version of "Quality Control" and deciding anything is a flaw.

I would have to agree with you there. seems a bit over the top to call that a manufacturing defect. I have no love for GW but I do think they will work out most of the kinks. From what I understand they are spin casting resin. This is far from ideal, they would have been better off using Reaction Injection Molding... It would have cost them a bundle to re-tool but the constant returns will cost them more financially as well as in customer approval.

Just my two cents.

Necros wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Oh wait. There's none. It's hairs stuck inside the clamshell packaging.

While it's grody and kinda weird, it's not exactly "a defect in Finecast".

Looks more to me like Wayland's implementing their own version of "Quality Control" and deciding anything is a flaw.

Sorry, but I'm not interested in buying someone's pubes. I got enough of my own to worry about.

Like I said: "it's grody and kinda weird" but it's not a defect in the material.

Unless Beasts of War was doing that as a joke, in which case I retract my statement and add in a "What were the actual flaws there?" because I'm not seeing anything that would make it "unsellable" necessarily.

There's some terrible casts in those photos. Good on Wayland for not expecting their customers to return a product they just purchased---and returning inferior products before selling to their customers.

Ouch.

Whats worse is how obvious the failures are in some.

Though at least we know where the guys with neckbeards end up.

Kanluwen wrote:

Looks more to me like Wayland's implementing their own version of "Quality Control" and deciding anything is a flaw.

Selective images are selective Kan. But I don't personally want to open a packet of 'the best toy soldiers in the world' and find a pube.

Now perhaps put up the rest of the images...

Like this one.

Notice that Theodin's mount's foreleg looks badly cast too.
Poor thing would be shot if at a steeplechase.

Kanluwen wrote:

niceguyteddy wrote:I don't believe anyone should accept significant defects in Finecast. GW will only improve the process if it makes economic sense, in that they are receiving too many returns.

Point out the "defects in Finecast" there for me.

Oh wait. There's none. It's hairs stuck inside the clamshell packaging.

While it's grody and kinda weird, it's not exactly "a defect in Finecast".

Looks more to me like Wayland's implementing their own version of "Quality Control" and deciding anything is a flaw.

2 out of 31, though. That still leaves 29 of those images that are depicting genuine flaws.

AgeOfEgos wrote:There's some terrible casts in those photos. Good on Wayland for not expecting their customers to return a product they just purchased---and returning inferior products before selling to their customers.

I really, really want to know exactly what they're using as standards for "unsellable". It seems quite frankly...random as heck.

The statement they make on their site is "While failure doesn’t necessarily denote the blister content as being of less than merchantable quality, for our purposes it does categorise it as having a visible flaw that might be of sufficient concern to a customer such that the item might be returned.".

The big question for me is the LOTR horse. The "flaw" there just looks like it's a mold line stretching from the barding to the horse itself--which isn't uncommon on the metals or even plastics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Looks more to me like Wayland's implementing their own version of "Quality Control" and deciding anything is a flaw.

Selective images are selective Kan. But I don't personally want to open a packet of 'the best toy soldiers in the world' and find a pube.

Now perhaps put up the rest of the images...

Like this one.

And I'm not disputing that some of them genuinely looked terrible. But the standard is seemingly all over the place.

Admittedly some of these are terrible and shouldn't have made it out of GW HQ but...

Having only had a quick scan through a random selection of the images, I would suggest that most of these 'defects' are no worse than the normal flash and/or pitting issues that everyone came to expect from the metal variants of these kits and there wasn't as much whinging about them.

Hendie wrote:Admittedly some of these are terrible and shouldn't have made it out of GW HQ but...

Having only had a quick scan through a random selection of the images, I would suggest that most of these 'defects' are no worse than the normal flash and/or pitting issues that everyone came to expect from the metal variants of these kits and there wasn't as much whinging about them.

Normal flash doesn't require you to resculpt missing parts, just trim excess material. For some reason, people are posting the least damaging pics here (like the pube blister) and not the ones missing crozius handles, sword tips, chains that disappear in the middle of the length to reappear a bit later, etc.. I don't mind taking a hobby knife to trim off a bit extra resin or metal (I've got the skill to do that) but I don't have the skill to resculpt a chain or decorative weapon handle. I also shouldn't at the price and hype associated with Finecast.

Re read Wayland's statement.
It sounds like they have been fair to me.

There is a difference between flash and some defects. Am in the middle of cleaning up a metal Citadel model at the moment and the cast is not pristine by a long chalk.
However it is a question of cleaning up and removing excess, some of which is awkward to get to.

However GW have made the claim that this is a top quality product and are charging a premium price for it.
It is to my way of thinking only fair that the product should therefore reflect that and anything less is not acceptable.
It will cost you some time and GS if you have the confidence and skill to make the unecessary repairs.



I dunno, you find a pair of waifs in the wild wood, take pity and raise em instead of eating the little blighters and they suck yer tits off as a reward!
Bloody Romans!

If you look closer at the horse at the point the neck makes contact with the chainmail there is an obvious 'well' where the surface has not formed. Regardless of how 'random' the faults are, Wayland are right to highlight their concern. Consider if they took the order and dispatched models to customers, only to have them returned. That way they are going to lose a lot of money in postal charges. Add to the fact that it looks like replacements are just as likely to be faulty, that is a hell of a lot of possible loss of revenue. When you buy anything you should expect it to be of really high quality, not covered in air bubbles and miscast parts. Well done Wayland.

And I'm not disputing that some of them genuinely looked terrible. But the standard is seemingly all over the place.

The standards were stated as anything that might make a customer return it. That would be a threshold that every one of those pics matched whether it was by an inch or by a mile (although the 2 with hair are kinda dubious inclusions at best). Some of the miscasts were minor, some were major, but all were miscast and cause for concern.

Hendie wrote:

Having only had a quick scan through a random selection of the images, I would suggest that most of these 'defects' are no worse than the normal flash and/or pitting issues that everyone came to expect from the metal variants of these kits and there wasn't as much whinging about them.

Erm, there are large parts of the miniature missing. That's not pitting or flash.

Chain disappears mid-length




Face missing




Crozius handle not formed




These are not acceptible for "Fine"cast miniatures at the current price point. I never had to deal with anything like that with the old metal lines. The worst I ever got was one or two figs with the mold misaligned less than a millimeter and an obvious line down each side out of over 100 metal GW minis (I've got a 90 man all metal 2nd/3rd edition marine army and used to have another 80 man metal 2nd edition IG infantry army... plus the usual smattering of other metals from specialist games and for mostly plastic 40k armies).

60 pieces are good but still a pretty limited sampling, if you were doing a proper investigation you would check every piece received and then put a percentage on your findings.

Or state what percentage your sample was compared to the whole population.

Example: Wayland receives 6000 pieces of fine cast across two shipments. If we use the 60 randomly selected pieces that would mean they only checked 1 percent of the total volume. Honestly a bogus statistic.

Now to be believable they should have sampled at least 1,000 pieces. This size of a sampling has shown to be accurate for statistics no matter the size of the population. Which would give a more accurate and true statistic.

Also since they are closed blisters, gods only know what more you would find by opening them.

That's the big shocker for me, 55% error rate and you're only looking at unopened blisters. Ones they couldn't find anything wrong with could actually have huge miscasts or bubbles you just can't see, the error rate is in all likelihood much higher than 55%.

Pael wrote:60 pieces are good but still a pretty limited sampling, if you were doing a proper investigation you would check every piece received and then put a percentage on your findings.

Or state what percentage your sample was compared to the whole population.

Example: Wayland receives 6000 pieces of fine cast across two shipments. If we use the 60 randomly selected pieces that would mean they only checked 1 percent of the total volume. Honestly a bogus statistic.

Now to be believable they should have sampled at least 1,000 pieces. This size of a sampling has shown to be accurate for statistics no matter the size of the population. Which would give a more accurate and true statistic.

And would likely render them unable to return the minis wholesale to GW because they're opened by the merchant. So, you think to prove a point that they should run their business into the ground?

At least Wayland are using quality control,are finecost?