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Why not make them all plastic? Is this some sort of overhead issue?
Gee Dee I love plastic the best.

It is indeed an overhead issue. Plastic costs a lot more to make the sprues, etc so on for.

In a nutshell:

To make a resin model, you take a silicone mold, spray it with mold release, mix the two-part-resin, and pour the stuff into the mold. You can do this by hand.

To make a plastic model, you design the metal mold, pay tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture it, then to install it into a machine. Then you pressurize the liquid plastic and inject it into the metal mold.


In more of a nutshell:

The cost of resin material is moderately low. The cost of plastic material is really low.
The cost of a mold for resin ranges from tens of dollars and lasts hundreds of molds. The cost of a mold for plastics ranges from tens of thousands of dollars.

There are also other reasons beyond cost (thought to be sure these concerns are probably not first and foremost with companies like GW).

The metal molds for plastic models do not have any give or flex to them (naturally), so there can't be any overlap of the original model above or below that line where the 2 molds meet (these parts would just be ripped off when the mold is mechanically separated)

A resin mold flexes, so you can have complex curves and lines coming off of the original model. This allows resin models to have much more detail.

A good example is all the bevels and jutting edges of a FW terminator shoulder pad compared to the ones you get from GW.

Finecast was originally created to replace the metal models for cost reasons, (the price of tin alone more than tripled from 2009 to 2011). Because the metal models were poured into a flexible mold (acrylic or silicone) they had this detail to start, and couldn't be transferred into a metal/plastic casting system.

I personally like resin. And when I say that I mean ACTUAL resin, compared to Finecast resin, which is so light it feels like styrofoam.

I agree with More Dakka, although not comparable in a true sense (as I had to supply the legs and arms) one of my Raven Guard upgrade guys from FW feels more robust than the Necron Overlord I got for Christmas, maybe GW should ask FW for their Secret Resin Recipe

FW's resin recipe isn't secret.
It's just PU resin.

Finecast is a resin with filler (makes it lighter, makes the resin go further) but has limitations on the smaller pieces (as shown).
The more spindly the pieces, the more it is apparent (finecast).
The more squat and solid, the less apparent (Mantic stuff).