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LINK TO KICKSTARTER: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1474140048/toys-for-your-toys-science-fiction-wargaming-acces

Hi Guys and Girls,
Rhys from PDC Gaming here – some of you already know me from The Games Shop in Aldershot, UK !

Here at PDC we have been hacking around with the idea of making some Injection Mould Tools for plastic war games components and accessories in 28mm – as PDC Ltd, Plastic is what we do for a living – and, as a good portion of us are modellers and gamers, it has been almost a natural progression!

Below are some of the images from the Concept CAD work we have been doing:

you can find more of these on our Facebook page - PDC Gaming on Facebook - swing by and see what we have been up to!


Other Manufacturers Miniatures shown for Scale Purposes ONLY.

As you can also see from these images, we have been using our Rapid Prototyper to produce First Pass prototype models – these allow us to check things like scale, fit, and whether the components are suitable for manufacture in a plastic injection environment.
So – to the end of my ramble!
On May the 4th 2013 (Happy Star Wars Day!) we will be launching our First Kickstarter Campaign!
PDC Gaming Kickstarter - The Page is currently being updated in readiness for Saturday's launch, stand by for more details!
Our funding target is only £10,000 – this would enable us to lay down 3 different injection mould tools to run here in the UK – using the machines we already have at PDC Towers.
The pictures below show samples from the Assault Rifle prototype tool which we have manufactured in the run-up to the launch of the campaign – sprues from this will be up for grabs at certain levels of the Kickstarter!

Please swing by and give us a look – hopefully you like what we’re doing!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1474140048/toys-for-your-toys-science-fiction-wargaming-acces
Cheers,
All the Boys @ PDC Gaming.

If you would create a quad barreled gun tracked gun, I would certainly consider ordering three.

Well, the treaded contraption is very cool! Will definitely watch this.

 Valhallan42nd wrote:
If you would create a quad barreled gun tracked gun, I would certainly consider ordering three.

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Warpath/Forge-Fathers/Vehicles/Product/Forge-Father-Jotunn-Heavy-Hailstorm-Cannon-Bundle.html

Very interesting. The gun seems bland, will your kits for the kickstarter be more detailed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I do like the idea of the tracked heavy weapon platform. Place it on a 60mm base with two infantry and you have an easy way to make heavy weapon teams.

 RiTides wrote:
Well, the treaded contraption is very cool! Will definitely watch this.

Agreed. Id like to have a couple to use as autonomous gun platforms. Kinda like a tracked version of Tau gun drones.

Depending on the size the heavy weapons might make good guns for 10/15mm mecha as well. Ill be keeping an eye on this for sure...I may be able to use a bunch of this stuff.

Hmmm plastic....

Will have to keep an eye on this

This I like! They will make excellent additions to my SM force. I notice some Jetbike renders on your Facebook as well, any plans to have them show up on the ks? I can tell you that I would be in for at least 5 of them.

Edit: Ah, just checked your Kickstarter page, roll on jetbikes!

The detail looks to shallow, almost toy-ish.

Subbed.

I am not quite understanding the pledges...

If I wanted 3 of the 'tracked gun' I can pledge "The main event" (ME)

My ork Big gunz could use some TLC, so I would be interested in getting possibly 9 of these 'guns' and magnetising the barrels, or if cheap enough 15 guns and just having extras (9 kannons, 3 lobbas, 3 Zzaps)

 Riquende wrote:

 Valhallan42nd wrote:
If you would create a quad barreled gun tracked gun, I would certainly consider ordering three.

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Warpath/Forge-Fathers/Vehicles/Product/Forge-Father-Jotunn-Heavy-Hailstorm-Cannon-Bundle.html

Thank you, but no. I'm not fond of Mantic's scale.

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

 Riquende wrote:

 Valhallan42nd wrote:
If you would create a quad barreled gun tracked gun, I would certainly consider ordering three.

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Warpath/Forge-Fathers/Vehicles/Product/Forge-Father-Jotunn-Heavy-Hailstorm-Cannon-Bundle.html

Thank you, but no. I'm not fond of Mantic's scale.

And potentially, this is 3 guns for £10.00 opposed to 3 guns for £30.00. (If I understand the pledge correctly, you can potentially get 10 guns for £30.00)

 Lockark wrote:
The detail looks to shallow, almost toy-ish.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but I think that this is almost a strength, rather than a weakness. I've seen some other 3rd party bits makers that have decent designs that are either too busy, or the detail is soft, or some other problems. This is simple, straightforward and clean. I'd be interested in more of this company's stuff, and will keep my eye out for a KS if they go that route.

-C6

 Commander Cain wrote:

Spoiler:

This I like! They will make excellent additions to my SM force. I notice some Jetbike renders on your Facebook as well, any plans to have them show up on the ks? I can tell you that I would be in for at least 5 of them.

Edit: Ah, just checked your Kickstarter page, roll on jetbikes!

Where did you find the painted pic spoilered above? (On the kickstarter placeholder page?)

I can see both sides, that these could use a little more detail, but are at least nice and clean. Like I said, will be watching!

 RiTides wrote:

 Commander Cain wrote:

Spoiler:

This I like! They will make excellent additions to my SM force. I notice some Jetbike renders on your Facebook as well, any plans to have them show up on the ks? I can tell you that I would be in for at least 5 of them.

Edit: Ah, just checked your Kickstarter page, roll on jetbikes!

Where did you find the painted pic spoilered above? (On the kickstarter placeholder page?)

I can see both sides, that these could use a little more detail, but are at least nice and clean. Like I said, will be watching!

The facebook page has some I believe.

These guys are my local FLGS etc so thumbsup from me

Those are some gnarly mold lines you got on those things, bud. You really need to look into QC of either your mold cutting or your casting. Something's gone soft somewhere.

I really like that weapon platform you've got there and the jetbike renders I'm seeing could be very interesting!

 Lockark wrote:
The detail looks to shallow, almost toy-ish.

These are prototypes, expect rivet heads, dials etc in production models.

Look us up on Facebook!

Regards

Celt

Admin, PDC Gaming


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Breotan wrote:
Those are some gnarly mold lines you got on those things, bud. You really need to look into QC of either your mold cutting or your casting. Something's gone soft somewhere.

Hi there!!

These are from the prototype tool - production parts will come from new tooling - see our "real" (ah-hem) business site www.pdclimited.net for our pedigree and www.protomould.co.uk for our manufacturing business (though unless Kickstarter goes orbital we would still manufacture these parts on our development machines in Winchester - tool life guarantee 10k shots)

Look us up on Facebook for more pics and info

Regards

Celt

Admin, PDC Gaming

Looks good, and I love the concept, but you guys need a proper sculptor hired, and not just some of your own 3d designs... they look more like playmobil than wargames parts at the moment.

Just being totally honest, there. There's not many people making plastic sprues, so I'd love this to succeed, but the sculpt and design quality needs to be a bit better.

The only thing I would say looks passable are the not-bolters, and even there you've made the classic 3d sculpt newbie mistake of making the detail too shallow on the digital designs so that it gets a little lost on the 28mm final sculpts. It all looks like a selection of shapes arranged together rather than something designed to look cool from the ground up (the underhang on some of the combi-bolters looks bad, especially on the one with the triangle-shaped bit underneath it). If you're not an artist, hire one.

Still, it's a great idea.. perhaps you might look into setting up business as a plastic sprue manufacturer for-hire in the UK? At the moment, there is Renedra, and no-one else with the skills required to make/ interest in making plastic sprues for wargamers, and their prices are *extremely* expensive.. £40k for a small sprue and an 18 month wait. If you set up shop as an alternate tooling company based in the UK, you'd get a LOT of business. Not everyone wants to work with Chinese toy companies to get their sprues tooled (Mantic had their goblins tooled in China, and the end result was terrible, blobby sprues lacking detail, much worse than your prototype sprue, which is very nicely cast), there is a huge gap in the market there, at the moment it's basically "Renedra or nothing". If you just contact a few companies with an offer, you'd get interest, it's as simple as that.

Good luck!

3 "tracked cannnons" for £10? I will be on for a bit of that.

The main area that could do with some improvement are the tracks but otherwise looking decent an very good for the price.

I've been lucky enough to see some of these "bits" up close (the gun carriages are wonderful and could be a good jumping off point for all kinds of conversions, I'm thinking Iron Warriors Chaos spawn might work).

For anyone else, diving straight into plastics would be an enormous challenge and risk, the fact that they do this as a day job means that they're miles ahead of where a lot of people would be.

Personnally, I'm in for a pledge, can't wait to see what you guys are going to come up with and good luck.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Looks good, and I love the concept, but you guys need a proper sculptor hired, and not just some of your own 3d designs... they look more like playmobil than wargames parts at the moment.

Just being totally honest, there. There's not many people making plastic sprues, so I'd love this to succeed, but the sculpt and design quality needs to be a bit better.

The only thing I would say looks passable are the not-bolters, and even there you've made the classic 3d sculpt newbie mistake of making the detail too shallow on the digital designs so that it gets a little lost on the 28mm final sculpts. It all looks like a selection of shapes arranged together rather than something designed to look cool from the ground up (the underhang on some of the combi-bolters looks bad, especially on the one with the triangle-shaped bit underneath it). If you're not an artist, hire one.

Still, it's a great idea.. perhaps you might look into setting up business as a plastic sprue manufacturer for-hire in the UK? At the moment, there is Renedra, and no-one else with the skills required to make/ interest in making plastic sprues for wargamers, and their prices are *extremely* expensive.. £40k for a small sprue and an 18 month wait. If you set up shop as an alternate tooling company based in the UK, you'd get a LOT of business. Not everyone wants to work with Chinese toy companies to get their sprues tooled (Mantic had their goblins tooled in China, and the end result was terrible, blobby sprues lacking detail, much worse than your prototype sprue, which is very nicely cast), there is a huge gap in the market there, at the moment it's basically "Renedra or nothing". If you just contact a few companies with an offer, you'd get interest, it's as simple as that.

Good luck!

Hi There!

Our development speciality is engineering product (ie mechanical rather than biomorphic forms) - we can have functional rapid tools with a capability of 10k shots in 2-3 weeks from receipt of CAD and deposit. Our tooling uses a modular tool chassis (similar to the established MUD - multi-unit-dock production tooling solution) - to be honest if the kickstarter went to £20k we'd lay down all the tools as fully hardened production MUD tools and drop the eventual RRP to say £5 a sprue - but we don't know if the kickstarter will even fund so *gulp* who can tell!!! As I said in previous posts look at our "day job" company websites for an idea of what we can do...

Further down the line we can look to branch out into more "artistic" directions but that's why our first offering is weapons and vehicle bits - we're "learning" sculpt CAD and already have some outline designs for actual figures - but we don't want to compete with Mantic/GW or anyone else - we're in in for the craic and want PDC Gaming to be all about the hobby and having fun - any money made will be reinvested to make more toys (minus a few rounds at the bar).

TO THE POPULATION of DakkaDakka - if any of you want to talk to us about moulding figures and accessories - get in touch - we're new to toy manufacture but ancient to plastic materials and processing - will gladly trade shares in the business for designs...

If you'd like to pop in and visit we'd be delighted to show you what we're up to (and probably pick your brains!?! ) - our 3D printing kit is as used by A N Other gaming company to make their masters - so we have the gear to do things right!!

Regards

Celt, Admin, PDC Gaming

If those weapon platform guns would fit on a dreadnought, I'll be up for a few sprues.

Any chance of seeing a sprue of nice chunky wheels or a modular track system? I really miss the old Imperial Guard tank track sprues; they were such a great resource for scratchbuilders. Wheels and tracks are also the worst parts of a vehicle to have in resin or metal, because they come into direct contact with the table and get chipped to hell.

Want to pledge, kickstarter not open, will likely not remember this exists when it does eventually open

May 4th !! - only 2 days to wait -

celticfable, thanks for posting! It seems you guys have great plastic ability... if you can match that with some great designs, I think you'd make a lot of people very happy

Maybe I missed it in the KS, but what is the expected 'turn around' from end of Kickstarter to having molds machined and sprues in-hand?